The City of Calgary is committed to achieving community sustainability and the design and construction work managed by Transportation Infrastructure (TI) is aligned with The City's Environmental Policy.
- Construction projects and contractors comply with environmental legislation and established standards.
- Opportunities are pursued to engage, collaborate and partner with other City business units, levels of government and organizations on programs and initiatives that benefit the environment.
- Strategies are developed and implemented to promote natural resources conservation, prevent pollution and reduce water.
- Continual improvement of TI's environmental initiatives and practices described above is facilitated by an environmental management system that is regularly audited and registered to an international standard.
Examples of the environmental initiatives found at TI are:
Contractor environmental responsibilities
Contractors working for TI and on other City of Calgary projects must review and sign the 
Contractor Environmental Responsibilities Package (CERP) prior to starting work. The CERP document outlines the City's Environmental Policy, and informs the contractor of City expectations of performance need to help ensure the City can meet its commitment to protect the environment and comply with all environmental laws and regulations.
Environmental Construction Operations (ECO) Plans
Construction projects having the potential to affect the environment all have plans in place to prevent or mitigate impacts. ECO Plans consist of written protocols, procedures, and management practices combined with site drawings that indicate how contractors will minimize adverse effects resulting from specific construction activities on a given site. They are reviewed for completeness by the City corporate environmental and safety management group and, once implemented at the start of construction, they are subject to compliance inspections and enforcement actions.
Waste reduction and diversion from the landfill
Consistent with City Council priorities and initiatives, TI actively works with its contractors to promote the reduction, reuse, and recycling of waste materials on construction site in order to reduce the quantity of material being disposed of in landfills. Waste materials are sorted by waste stream on construction sites, with significant quantities (in the order of thousands of tonnes, per site) of concrete, asphalt, fill, wood, cardboard, steel and plastic being reused and recycled.
TI Office Waste Reduction
The TI and West LRT Project offices are located in non-municipally owned buildings, and therefore the technologies and practices in regards to lighting, heating and cooling, and building-wide waste collection and recycling systems are beyond the control of TI. However, TI does integrate environmental considerations into all aspects of its business including in administration, with initiatives in place including: recycled paper content in paper purchase; electronic communications and file management to reduce paper consumption; duplex printing to reduce paper consumption; office paper recycling blue box program; beverage container recycling; use of rechargeable batteries only; and encouragement of individual waste reduction at office social functions e.g. bring your own plate at picnics, etc.
Energy Efficiency and GHG Reduction
The Projects being designed and built by TI typically don’t include the types of buildings and facilities to which the Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy Efficiency and Design) standards apply. However, new C-Train stations are being designed in general conformance with such standards and sustainability principles to include passive solar, reduced and recycled material content, and other design features oriented to resource conservation and energy efficiency.
More broadly, TI has the mandate to design and build the elements of a transportation system that enables more sustainable land use and mobility as envisioned in Plan It Calgary, consistent with The City’s sustainability principles. In this way TI directly responds to issues of air quality and climate change, including greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction, while enabling citizens to reduce their own ecological and carbon footprint.
Audited environmental management system
As with all City business units, TI has developed and implemented an environmental management system that is annually audited to maintain registration to an international standard (ISO14001: 2004). Since 2006 this continued registration, based on a detailed review and confirmation that initiatives are achieving results, demonstrates that the City's transportation infrastructure is being delivered in a way that integrates environmental considerations at all levels to more than comply with laws, to continually improve environmental performance.
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