Renters want to go green too. Why your landlord may not invest — and what you can do

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This week:

Typically, whenever there is discussion about “greening” homes, it’s tailored toward homeowners. But what about the one-third of Canadians who rent? How can they try to make their homes more climate friendly?

Well, it’s a bit difficult, due to something called split incentive: the landlord has to put in the upfront cost to retrofit the building, but it’s the tenant who sees the benefits. For example, an energy efficient stove would mean a lower electricity bill, or a HEPA air filter would mean cleaner air, so there’s very little incentive for the landlord to make any upgrades.

And for the tenant, if the landlord does make upgrades, their rent could go up or they could face renoviction — where renters get evicted for renovations, and units may be re-rented later at a higher price.

Brendan Haley, senior director of policy strategy at Efficiency Canada, a think-tank that researches energy efficiency and the economy, said that he doesn’t like the framing of split incentives.

Instead, he feels that it is something that needs to be done, despite any financial benefits.

“Having a healthy, energy-efficient building, as the climate is changing should be almost a requirement, and not something where we get all bent out of shape about who pays and who benefits, but something that is a requirement if you’re owning a building.”

Tony Irwin, president and CEO of the Canadian Federation of Apartment Associations, said that there are many challenges for building owners when it comes to retrofitting.

“We do have members who want to do it, but, you know, they look at the economic realities of doing it, and it is, no doubt, quite challenging just to make the numbers [work], or to be able to secure the financing to do the work,” he said.

Additionally, there is the difficulty of doing work on aging infrastructure.

“Toronto last year was talking about wanting to bring in maximum heat [bylaws] in buildings. So in other words, forcing air conditioning,” he said. “And people think, ‘well, that should be easy, why wouldn’t people want to do that?'”

But because many of the buildings are old — built in the 1970s or earlier — “it’s not a straightforward exercise,” said Irwin.

Haley said that Efficiency Canada is looking to improve energy efficiency and also protect tenant rights, but there’s a need for more policies to do that.

Kari Hyde, manager of utilities and demand-side management at the Pembina Institute said that addressing the split incentive is a challenge, as it not only requires conversations between building owners and tenants, but also requires the federal government, provincial governments and municipalities to work in tandem.

“It’s really the federal government who has to start kind of figuring out what a high performance building code looks like, and how do we do that appropriately, without the concerns of renovictions,” she said.

Haley said that he’s seen city campaigns such as some by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a tenant advocacy group not only pushing for maximum heat bylaws, but performance labels on buildings so the tenant understands what they might expect in terms of high bills or other problems. 

“The other policy [suggested by ACORN] is there’s just mandatory energy performance standards where a building has to meet a certain either energy or greenhouse gas performance standard, and if it doesn’t meet that performance standard, the building owner can receive a fine.”

Though the solutions may not necessarily be there at the moment in terms of policies, Bob Grove, author at Climate Council, an advocacy group for climate change solutions and education, said there are ways renters can make a difference through their actions at home, including:

He recognized that not everyone can afford these things, but he said they can be considered an investment and move with you just like your furniture.

“So, you know, I move into my next apartment, I’m unplugging the electric range, I’m putting my induction cooktop on top of it, and then I set my microwave someplace, and that becomes my oven,” he said.

“So I’ve got all the functionality in that kitchen without using those legacy appliances that are so inefficient. And when I’m done, I just move all my stuff with me, put their light bulbs back in, plug their stove back in, and, hey, I didn’t change anything.”

— Nicole Mortillaro

Old issues of What on Earth? are here. The CBC News climate page is here. 

Check out our podcast and radio show.  In our newest episode: Canada’s first local state of emergency due to drought was declared on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia in 2022. The shortage was so bad, officials feared the region would run out of water for hospitals and fire departments. And the Coast has been under severe water restrictions for five of the last eight summers, a situation experts warn could become the norm. In her documentary, “Drought in the rainforest,” Liz Hoath with CBC’s audio doc unit tells the story of a community hit hard by rising temperatures and what some call the local government’s failure to plan for climate change.

What On Earth drops new podcast episodes every Wednesday and Saturday. You can find them on your favourite podcast app or on demand at CBC Listen. The radio show airs Sundays at 11 a.m., 11:30 a.m. in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Have a compelling personal story about climate change you want to share with CBC News? Pitch a First Person column here.

Last week’s issue included a profile of Sylvie D’Aoust, also known as Recycle Warrior Grl, who recycles old appliances she picks up on the curb in Chelsea, Que.

Michael Le Bas of Vancouver wrote: “Hats off to Sylvie D’Aoust! Reducing the amount of material that goes to the dump takes a conscious effort. The same with re-using. Bravo to Sylvie for making parts available online. I live in a 41-unit apartment complex and decided several years ago to take the owners’ soft plastic, batteries, light bulbs and styrofoam to our local zero waste centre. Up till then it was going to the dump. I am 77 so I do it for my grandchildren hoping, in my small way, to make the future a better place to live.”

Write us at [email protected]. (And feel free to send photos, too!) 

A cardboard kuzu stretches its neck to smell a flower on a tree. A troop of monkeys skips through the forest. A gorilla tentatively stretches its forearm towards the water and hesitates – how will it cross the Congo River to continue its great migration?

These are just some of the dozens of life-sized cardboard animals stampeding along city streets around the world to draw attention to the issue of climate change. The puppet animals, which began their 20,000-kilometre migration at the Kinshasa Botanical Garden in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in early April, will pass through Marrakesh this weekend and then push northward into Europe, as they “flee” from the harms of climate change. By the time the herd crosses the Arctic Circle in Norway in early August, its ranks will have swelled to the hundreds, picking up vervet monkeys, wolves, reindeer and other local animals (and puppeteers) along the way. 

The public art initiative, called The Herds, combines puppetry, storytelling and activism. It’s the latest project of The Walk Productions, which toured a giant puppet of a nine-year-old Syrian refugee girl from Turkey to the United Kingdom in 2021. Co-founder, playwright and director Amir Nizar sees the recycled animals as “a wake-up call, urging us to change our ways.”

You can follow the migration on Instagram and YouTube, or make your own puppets out of recycled materials. 

— Hannah Hoag

Balcony solar panels are popular with apartment dwellers in Germany. Why don’t we see them in North America? Grist explains.

Despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s crackdown on clean energy, wind and solar have been seeing huge growth in the U.S., these 10 charts show.

Climate change has come for coconuts. Droughts and tropical cyclones have stressed trees in the Philippines (and beyond), reducing yields, delaying harvests and limiting farmer mobility. Bloomberg gets to the (coconut) meat of the story.

Australian government officials have shot hundreds of koalas to death from helicopters. The Guardian explains why, and what drought and wildfires have to do with it.

For Mina Ely, fur has never been out of style.

With her family’s Russian Jewish heritage, furs were the norm for both esthetic and practical reasons during cold Toronto winters.

“I would always remember when they would go out, or when they would go to shul, it was just something they would wear, because you can’t drive on Shabbat,” she told Cost of Living. “I always looked at my mom like, ‘wow’ … I loved the way it looked. It just symbolized so much elegance.”

Today Ely runs her own luxury fur brand based in Toronto, Arpino, designing coats for celebrities, hockey wives and other wealthy clients. She says business has been up in the last year.

Ely and others who work in the fur trade and the wider fashion industry say there’s been a recent uptick in interest in wearing real fur — both new and vintage. That’s following decades of contraction in fur sales, largely fuelled by successful campaigns from organizations like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which drew attention to the plight of the animals killed to make fur garments.  

Part of the renewed interest, fur industry people say, is linked to growing concern for sustainable fashion, both reusing existing materials — in the case of vintage fur — or in choosing natural materials over plastic-based alternatives that won’t break down in a landfill.

But animal rights organizations dispute claims that furs are more sustainable and more popular, saying it’s just the last gasp of a dying industry.

Mark Downey, CEO of the Fur Harvesters Auction in North Bay, Ont. — the only wild fur auction house in North America — said he first noticed a spike in interest in the summer of 2023.

That’s when buyers from countries that require visas to travel to Canada started getting in touch to gather the necessary paperwork to attend the auction that would be held the following spring.

“So you got like [people from] Turkey, China, any of these places that want to attend our auction have to call here and ask for what’s called a letter of invitation,” Downey said. “The amount of letters of invitation we were getting requested for…. It was just crazy.”

Prices rose accordingly. The skin of a marten, sometimes referred to as Canadian sable, averaged $49 in 2023, rising to $98.50 at last month’s auction where every species sold out, he says.

“They bought everything, right down to the last hair; we had nothing left, cleaned us right out.”

Part of the demand, says Downey, is a kind of retro appeal. 

Leah Van Loon, a stylist and fashion writer who splits her time between Calgary and Paris, says she’s noticed a resurgence she attributes partly to the fact that, these days, “a lot of young people want to look like old people…. You want to like you’re sort of already at an age where you’ve made it.”

Stronger still, though, is a trend away from fast fashion, she says. 

“You don’t need more things; you just need better things that you take care of better.”

Rob Cahill, who runs a new and vintage furrier called Cahill’s in Peterborough, Ont., says the family business just had a particularly good season.

He says thrifting enthusiasts in their 20s and 30s are behind most of their shop’s boost in sales, particularly of vintage coats. Parting with a few hundred dollars — or even up to $1,000 or more — for a second-hand fur they expect to last a long time strikes these customers as worthwhile given a high-quality goose down parka can retail for $1,500 to $1,800, Cahill says.

It also didn’t hurt that it was a particularly cold winter, he says.

Fuelled by interest in sustainable fashion

That tracks with what Anne Bissonnette, a University of Alberta professor and curator of the university’s clothing and textiles collection, has observed.

“People might spend a whole lot of money on outdoor wear that is very high tech, but this outdoor wear … is often made out of polyester and nylon and things that don’t biodegrade,” said Bissonnette.

“After you buy a few of these coats, you realize that fur is something that keeps you really warm, and First Nation people, Inuit people, have thrived and survived because of their ability to understand and use fur in ways that were really fantastic,” she said.

Ethically, some will not be comfortable with that, Bissonnette says, despite improvements to programs that help consumers trace garments to particular fur farms to get to know their practices, or, as Mark Downey points out, new, more humane standards for traps on the wild-fur side of things. 

“Now, they still get killed at the end, right?” said Bissonnette. “But the same is true for cows, and we use leather.”

Animal rights orgs dispute a fur comeback

The Animal Welfare Foundation of Canada said in a statement to CBC it “does not support industrial-based, non-Indigenous use of animal fur for fashion. The practice of fur-farming is unethical, and subjects animals to inhumane conditions.”

Ashley Byrne, director of outreach communication at PETA, says, “The truth is that a handful of vintage shoppers have been buying vintage coats for years. Most of those people would never dream of buying a new fur coat… I think it’s a little more visible now because you have all these little micro trends going on, you know, TikTok, and they’re visually blowing up.”

Byrne points to contraction in the industry, which includes the closure of the two other major North American fur auctions in 2018 and 2019, as well as Kopenhagen Fur, the world’s largest fur auction, in 2023.

— Brandie Weikle

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Editors: Emily Chung and Hannah Hoag | Logo design: Sködt McNalty