For the first time, Mercer consulting published its annual Quality of Living city ranking, with a new brand new chart enclosed, called Eco-City Ranking. In the main report Toronto fared fairly well, ranking 16th in the world and 3rd in North America, sadly this good news doesn’t go on, as the new chart clearly demonstrates.

The chart is based on a number of points like water availability, how good the sewage systems are and air pollution. So to be classed as eco-friendly then the city would have to have restricted pollution and maximize it’s renewable materials. While we would assume the green cities such a Oslo to rate highly, we wouldn’t have assumed industrial cities such as Stuttgart to be more eco-friendly than Toronto, but they are! Toronto did not score very well even among North American cities, ranking in 11th place. In joint 3rd place came Ottawa and Helsinki, whilst Honolulu came in second, but the award for the best eco-friendly city goes to Calgary. Montreal and Vancouver also did great for Canada, ranking a joint 13 in the eco-city chart.

However in the light of our 16th place in overall ranking the Eco-City ranking may seem of negligible importance, we have to be aware of the gap. As Slagin Parakatil, Senior Researcher at Mercer, said: “A city’s eco-status or attitude toward sustainability can have significant impact on the quality of living of its inhabitants”.

Our dragging our heels in environmental quality of life may have power on our overall quality of life, quicker than many of us would expect.

Julie Kinnear is neighbourhood eco enthusiast and a Toronto MLS professional

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