Environment change & weather: 1)Barrie residents can help keep reusable items out of the landfill; 2) (Update) Ontario to miss emissions reduction goal by an even wider gap than it admits: auditor; 3)UNESCO designates 26 new biosphere reserves amid biodiversity challenges and climate change; 4)The weather menu is sunny side up as region basks in dry stretch

1)Barrie residents can help keep reusable items out of the landfill – October 6-10

Courtesy Barrie360.com and News Release

By City of Barrie, October 1, 2025

City of Barrie residents are encouraged to help keep reusable items out of the landfill by participating in the curbside collection of textiles (clothing, linens, towels, stuffed toys, and shoes) from October 6 to 10.

Donating your items is easy:

Confirm your textile collection day (it’s a different day than your regular curbside collection day for organics, recycling, and garbage). The textile collection schedule is available below or by visiting RecyclingRewards.com/barrie.

Place your items in a bag (preferably a clear bag, but if you don’t have a clear bag, you can use any type of waterproof plastic bag) and put a label on the bag that says “textiles”.

Put your items out on the curb on your textile collection day by 7 a.m., rain or shine. The bags will be picked up by Recycling Rewards trucks before 5 p.m. on your textile collection day.

For Monday to Thursday waste collection areas, textile collection occurs the day after your regularly scheduled waste collection day. For Friday waste collection areas, textile collection occurs on Monday, October 6.

Curbside Waste Collection Day Textile Collection Day

There are also four textile bins at facilities across the city that accept textile donations year-round. The bin locations can be found at the Operations Centre (165 Ferndale Drive North), Wastewater Treatment Facility (167 Bradford Street), Sadlon Arena (555 Bayview Drive), and the Allandale Recreation Centre (190 Bayview Drive). Note: only textiles should be dropped off at these locations.

More information on curbside textile collection week is available at barrie.ca/TextileCollectionWeek. Residents can also visit barrie.ca/AlternativeWasteDisposal for more information about ways to repurpose, reuse, or recycle clothing, textiles, and dispose of other items.

2) (Update) Ontario to miss emissions reduction goal by an even wider gap than it admits: auditor

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Allison Jones, October 1, 2025

Ontario’s environment ministry says it will miss its 2030 greenhouse gas emissions reduction target but the auditor general says even that admission of failure is downplayed.

Auditor general Shelley Spence writes in a report Wednesday that the government has projected that it will miss its 2030 emissions reduction target by 3.5 megatonnes, but in reality it will likely be an even wider margin.

Environment Minister Todd McCarthy said targets are not as important as results.

“We are continuing to meet our commitment to at least try to meet our commitment for the 2030 target,” he said at a press conference.

“But targets are not outcomes. We believe in achievable outcomes, not unrealistic objectives.”

To meet the target now, the province would have to do the equivalent of taking half of all fossil-fuelled passenger vehicles off Ontario’s roads in five years, Spence found.

“Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is important for the future of our province,” Spence said at a press conference.

“The cost of not reducing emissions far outweighs the cost of reduction. We’re already seeing the effects of climate change and the millions of dollars it is costing.”

The Ministry of Environment disagreed with three of the auditor’s four recommendations on this file – that they propose longer-term targets beyond 2030 as 10 other provinces and territories have, that they consult the public on an updated climate change plan and that they publicly report progress annually.

McCarthy said the government is committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions but not if it would jeopardize affordability.

“We have consensus in our government when it comes to protecting the environment, being strong stewards of the environment, but we have a consensus around balance as well,” he said.

“We can’t put people’s jobs at risk. We cannot put families’ financial, household budgets at risk by going off in a direction based on some target that’s not achievable.”

The ministry concluded in January that it would fail to meet its 2030 target but never communicated that publicly, Spence said. In that projection, the province overestimated reductions to be achieved from government initiatives in every sector, she found.

The projection includes federal policies that have ended, including the consumer carbon tax and electric vehicle subsidies, and assumes the province is on track to meet its targets for reducing and diverting organic waste from landfills despite making “little to no progress” on that, Spence found.

The government’s numbers also do not factor in the impacts of its car-friendly policies, including cutting the gas tax and removing road tolls, which could encourage more gas-powered vehicle use, she said.

Spence also said the government’s projection estimates that emissions will decrease slightly from the agricultural sector but there aren’t any mandatory initiatives in place to actually reverse rising emissions.

Not only is the government failing to meet its emission reductions targets, but it is failing to meet basic legislated requirements to prepare a climate change plan and publicly report on progress, Spence found.

The ministry hasn’t released a new report since 2021 and an update posted on its website in 2022 just repeated the 2021 information, she said. Nor has the government ever moved its 2018 plan to reduce emissions past the draft phase, Spence found. It has never been approved by cabinet.

Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner said this government does not prioritize the environment.

“I used to say that the government has a made-to-fail climate plan,” he said. “Now they have no damn plan at all.”

Ontario’s greenhouse gas emissions did decrease by 22 per cent between 2005 and 2023, but that was largely due to the previous government shuttering coal-fired electricity generation and the reductions in industrial activity during the 2008 recession and COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

3) UNESCO designates 26 new biosphere reserves amid biodiversity challenges and climate change

Courtesy Barrie360.com and The Associated Press

By Tammy Webber, September 27, 2025

An Indonesian archipelago that’s home to three-fourths of Earth’s coral species, a stretch of Icelandic coast with 70% of the country’s plant life and an area along Angola’s Atlantic coast featuring savannahs, forests and estuaries are among 26 new UNESCO-designated biosphere reserves.

The United Nations cultural agency says the reserves — 785 sites in 142 countries, designated since 1971 — are home to some of the planet’s richest and most fragile ecosystems. But biosphere reserves encompass more than strictly protected nature reserves; they’re expanded to include areas where people live and work, and the designation requires that scientists, residents and government officials work together to balance conservation and research with local economic and cultural needs.

“The concept of biosphere reserves is that biodiversity conservation is a pillar of socioeconomic development” and can contribute to the economy, said António Abreu, head of the program, adding that conflict and misunderstanding can result if local communities are left out of decision-making and planning.

The new reserves, in 21 countries, were announced Saturday in Hangzhou, China, where the program adopted a 10-year strategic action plan that includes studying the effects of climate change, Abreu said.

Biodiversity hot spots

The new reserves include a 52,000-square-mile (135,000-square-kilometer) area in the Indonesian archipelago, Raja Ampat, home to over 75% of earth’s coral species as well as rainforests and rare endangered sea turtles. The economy depends on fishing, aquaculture, small-scale agriculture and tourism, UNESCO said.

On Iceland’s west coast, the Snæfellsnes Biosphere Reserve’s landscape includes volcanic peaks, lava fields, wetlands, grasslands and the Snæfellsjökull glacier. The 1,460-square-kilometer (564 square-mile) reserve is an important sanctuary for seabirds, seals and over 70% of Iceland’s plant life — including 330 species of wildflowers and ferns. Its population of more than 4,000 people relies on fishing, sheep farming and tourism.

And in Angola, the new Quiçama Biosphere Reserve, along 206 kilometers (128 miles) of Atlantic coast is a “sanctuary for biodiversity” within its savannahs, forests, flood plains, estuaries and islands, according to UNESCO. It’s home to elephants, manatees, sea turtles and more than 200 bird species. Residents’ livelihoods include livestock herding, farming, fishing, honey production.

Collaboration is key

Residents are important partners in protecting biodiversity within the reserves, and even have helped identify new species, said Abreu, the program’s leader. Meanwhile, scientists also are helping to restore ecosystems to benefit the local economy, he said.

For example, in the Philippines, the coral reefs around Pangatalan Island were severely damaged because local fishermen used dynamite to find depleted fish populations. Scientists helped design a structure to help coral reefs regrow and taught fishermen to raise fish through aquaculture so the reefs could recover.

“They have food and they have also fish to sell in the markets,” said Abreu.

In the African nation of São Tomé and Príncipe, a biosphere reserve on Príncipe Island led to restoration of mangroves, which help buffer against storm surges and provide important habitat, Abreu said.

Ecotourism also has become an important industry, with biosphere trails and guided bird-watching tours. A new species of owl was identified there in recent years.

This year, a biosphere reserve was added for the island of São Tomé, making the country the first entirely within a reserve.

Climate and environmental concerns

At least 60% of the UNESCO biosphere reserves have been affected by extreme weather tied to climate change, which is caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and gas, including extreme heat and drought and sea-level rise, Abreu said.

The agency is using satellite imagery and computer modeling to monitor changes in coastal zones and other areas, and is digitizing its historical databases, Abreu said. The information will be used to help determine how best to preserve and manage the reserves.

Some biosphere reserves also are under pressure from environmental degradation.

In Nigeria, for example, habitat for a dwindling population of critically endangered African forest elephants is under threat as cocoa farmers expand into Omo Forest Reserve, a protected rainforest and one of Africa’s oldest and largest UNESCO Biosphere Reserves. The forest is also important to help combat climate change.

The Trump administration in July announced that the U.S. would withdraw from UNESCO as of December 2026, just as it did during his first administration, saying U.S. involvement is not in the national interest. The U.S. has 47 biosphere reserves, most in federal protected areas.

4)The weather menu is sunny side up as region basks in dry stretch

Courtesy Barrie360.com

By Ian MacLennan, September 27, 2025

The weather menu is sunny side up as region basks in dry stretch

Image – tree leaves changing colour along walking trail near Kempenfelt Park in Barrie (Sept. 2024, Image – Barrie 360)

Fall has gone AWOL.

Overachieving in the temperature department and underachieving in the rain gauge.

Environment Canada meteorologist Geoff Coulson tells Barrie 360 the trend will continue into October, especially when it comes to the temperature.

The normal daytime high in the Barrie area for this time of year is 16, and the overnight low should be around six degrees.

Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and wherever you get your podcasts to get notified of new episodes every day.

“We are expecting overall conditions to remain warmer than normal for a good part of the month of October,” says Coulson.

A stationary high pressure over Ontario will be responsible for the sunny conditions this week into the weekend, with daytime temperatures in the mid-20s Friday through Sunday.

In the rainfall category, Coulson says the Barrie area has been running drier than normal since June, though August was closer to normal, but that was the result of about half-a-month’s worth of rain in a single day.

He says some computer models show that by mid-October, the Barrie area could return to a more seasonal precipitation pattern.