You’ve powered A LOT of great wins for nature in Whistler in 2024.
This report celebrates the best of the best.
IMPACT AT A GLANCE
The 2024 Impact Report is here. It’s a straightforward look at what we did this year—what changed, who was affected, and where it made a difference. Real numbers, real stories, and real impact. If you want to see the results of the work, start here.
GROW: COMMUNITY GREENHOUSES & GARDENS
In 2024, 368 community members rallied together to grow over 11,000 lbs of food, making a direct impact on local food security in Whistler. Thanks to the support of Vail Resorts’ Epic Promise Day and the Whistler Blackcomb Foundation’s Environmental Fund, we ramped up infrastructure to expand the program’s reach. This included the addition of 18 greenhouse boxes at Alpha Lake Greenhouse, 10 garden boxes across Alpha Lake and Cheakamus Community Gardens, and two new compost boxes—all built with help from 32 dedicated volunteers, including Whistler Blackcomb carpenters, AWARE helpers, and GROW community members.
In a major step forward, GROW received multi-year funding from the Community Prosperity Fund, enabling the program to hire a permanent employee. This milestone strengthens GROW’s objectives to fight food poverty, foster social inclusion, and create a sustainable, climate-resilient community. Through local food growth and organic practices, we’re reducing GHG emissions, supporting food security, and driving environmental education.
FROM WASTE TO ACTION: ZERO WASTE CAMPAIGN
Did you know that food waste accounts for 8% of global emissions (Source)? In fact, if food waste were a country, it would be the third-largest contributor to global emissions (Source). One-third of all food produced globally is wasted, and when food ends up in landfills, it releases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Last year in Whistler, 26% of all waste sent to landfills by residents and businesses could have been diverted to organic composting and transformed into nutrient-rich soil to support local agriculture. Instead, it was destined for a landfill, contributing to planet-warming emissions. The good news? Tackling food waste is one of the simplest, most impactful ways to combat climate change, and in 2024, AWARE was selected as GFL’s Community Partner, collaborating with local government to launch a new zero-waste campaign with organics as the focus for 2025. The objective of this campaign is to empower the community and local businesses to take action on food waste, with the collective goal of diverting 5% of organic waste from landfills by the end of the year.
PROTECT PRIORITY HABITATS, PRESERVE OUR FUTURE
AWARE’s mission is to engage and empower our community in preserving Whistler’s natural environment. In December 2024, we acted on speaking up for conserving Green Lake’s riparian zones, which were being cut down in large swaths. This demonstration raised media attention, and since then, we have built an awareness campaign hoping to provide free public education and raise awareness about environmental stewardship as it relates to priority habitats in Whistler, through supporting research and innovation to conserve critical ecosystems. This campaign will bring in researchers on the following topics: water features and their riparian areas, mature and old forests and species and ecosystems at risk. The longer-term objective is to build on these educational opportunities towards community-led action aimed at policy development for the implementation of sustainable land-use practices that protect biodiversity for future generations.
YOUTH ENGAGEMENT: YOUNG VOICES, BIG IMPACT
Over the course of the last few years, AWARE has worked closely with youth in Whistler and Pemberton on engagement initiatives through Project NOW, Zero Waste Workshops and Circular Economy events. Growing from our Project NOW initiative, the purpose of this campaign is to continue engaging with a minimum of 150 local youth aged 14-29 through a model of place based participation, growing the organizations understanding of what environmental issues matter most to different groups of youth, and supporting their engagement efforts through participatory action. Our outreach efforts for 2025 include engaging with youth from Whistler, Pemberton and Lil’wat Nation, expanding our reach and broadening our lens and understanding of youth perspectives and what environmental issues matter most to them.
CIRCULAR ECONOMY INITIATIVES
A circular economy is a new way of looking at how we make and use things. It minimizes waste and makes the most of the earth’s resources, like wood from trees or minerals from the ground. In an economy where we make products that last longer, that can be fixed, reused again and again, and deconstructed into their original parts, we move away from a linear economy (take-make-waste) towards a more affordable, less cluttered, more biodiverse world with tight-knit communities that support each other. In partnership with the RMOW, we saw growth across all of our circular economy initiatives in 2024, including clothing swaps, community garage sales and repair cafes. 2,425 lbs of clothing diverted from landfills through our Clothing Swaps, reducing waste, saving money and setting a new standard for consumption. We plan to make these events even bigger and better in 2025.
ZERO WASTE SCHOOL WORKSHOPS
We are now in our ninth year of partnership with the SLRD in delivering the Zero Waste School Workshops, and last year, a total of 60 workshops were conducted, reaching 1424 students, equating to 1639 student learning hours. Workshops were delivered across 16 schools in the communities of Squamish, Whistler, Pemberton, Mount Currie, and Lillooet. Workshops aim to educate students to understand the reasons behind the need for waste reduction, empower them with the knowledge of recycling, and how to make simple changes to move towards a zero waste lifestyle. We are halfway through our 2024/2025 year and enrollment in the workshops has been high, and after this many years of delivering the program, we now have great working relationships with teachers calling us back into their classrooms to deliver the workshop to the next round of students, adding to the year over year impact.
GO BY BIKE: ACTIVE TRANSPORTATION
The Go By Bike initiative seeks to promote active transportation by encouraging the community to adopt cycling and other alternative modes of transportation over personal vehicles. It directly contributes to the RMOW’s greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets, and the Go By Bike initiative plays a critical role in advancing Big Move #1: Move Beyond the Car, outlined in the RMOW Big Moves Climate Action Implementation Plan. The initiative is also directly aligned with the RMOW Active Transportation Strategy, supporting the goal of achieving 50% of all trips by transit or active transportation by 2030. In 2024, we had 613 riders participate in Go By Bike; we saw our community log a total of 21,400km of biking and 4,640kg of GHG saved across the weeks of the events.
ZERO WASTE HEROES: EVENT WASTE MANAGEMENT SERVICE
AWARE continues to strive for waste reduction through its social enterprise, which helps events minimize their waste to continue moving our community towards its Zero Waste Goals. In 2024, the Zero Waste Heroes program diverted 8,818 lbs from landfill, and recorded over 929 meaningful conversations with members of the public, through the summer season, raising awareness and educating them on the different waste streams in the RMOW. This was the busiest year yet for the Zero Waste Heroes, and the end of 2024 brought great news that we were successful in securing a grant through the Whistler Blackcomb Foundation for the purchase of an electric van to help us with the operations of this program. 2025 is going to be a big year for the Zero Waste Heroes!
AWARE WEBSITE AND BRAND REDESIGN
In the fall of 2024, we received generous funding from the Whistler Blackcomb Foundation’s Environmental Fund to support a branding and website redesign project. Having a strong visual identity and a functioning website is an important element for an advocacy-based organization. The primary objective with this internal project was to build our capacity to communicate our work, expand our outreach and better share environmental resources with the public. We’ve been actively working with Cloud9 Creative Marketing Ltd. and look forward to launching the new brand assets along with the new website in late spring 2025.
THANK YOU TO OUR DONORS!
Thank you for your generosity. This list includes donors who contributed $1,000 or more between December 1, 2023 and November 30, 2024:
| $50,000 + | Whistler Community Foundation Whistler Blackcomb Foundation Green For Life |
| $10,000 – $49,999 | Envirofund Vail Resorts – Epic Promise Telus Community Board Grants Government of Canada Anonymous Donor |
| $5,000 – $9,999 | Whistler Community Enrichment Program |
| $1,000 – $4,999 | Anne Hale Robyn Cullen George Alexander |
