TORONTO, ON – September 30, 2008

The Minto Group was named the 2008 Green Builder of the Year by the Ontario Home Builders Association at a ceremony in Collingwood, Ontario last week. Minto is one of Ontario's largest builders of low-rise and high-rise residential buildings, in Ottawa and the Greater Toronto Area. The award is given annually to the builder that is deemed to have done the most to protect our planet.

Builders were judged on consumer education, environmentally building designs and techniques, green leadership in the residential construction industry, waste management strategies, community service and more. Since the 1990s, Minto has been continually striving to offer green choices to homebuyers, including certifying homes with industry labels like ENERGY STAR®, LEED®, and EQuilibrium TM / Net Zero. Minto's green leadership extends beyond the residences they build to a commitment to greening the company as well.

Minto has pushed the boundaries of its green commitment by beginning a process to green the company itself. Andrew Pride, Vice President of the Minto Green Team, puts it succinctly, "At Minto, we believe that to be a leading green builder, you also need to be a green business, so we are actively working on staff engagement, consumer education, and measuring and lowering our environmental impact across the board."

Minto has begun a continuous process of engaging suppliers, trades, residents, staff, and the public to empower and celebrate sustainable practices and greener choices. Under the banner Thinking Green…Living Greenerä, Minto is re-engineering the way it does business. This includes a quest for pragmatic solutions to achieve healthier, low-energy buildings, and moving towards a zero-waste business model.

Since 2003, Minto has offered its detached single family homebuyers an upgrade package to the ENERGY STAR® for New Homes certification, and recently committed to building all of its detached homes to this standard going forward. In 2005, Minto completed the first high-rise multi-residential building to be LEED® Canada certified and subsequently committed that all its high-rise communities from then on would be designed to achieve a LEED rating.

In 2007 Minto was selected by CMHC to build one of 12 EQuilibrium™ demonstration homes; these are homes that produce as much energy as they use on an annual basis. Called Inspiration – the Minto ecohome, it is now open to the public to visit on-line or in person in the Ottawa community of Manotick (www.minto.com/ecohome).

Minto is the first builder in Canada to begin a comprehensive, open, and systematic corporate greening strategy. Over all Minto calculates that every year its building and internal greening initiatives reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20,000 tonnes, save 23,000 Olympic-sized pools of water, and save enough electricity to power 900 typical Ontario homes.

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For more information, contact:
Andrew Pride, VP Minto Green Team
416-913-2077
green@minto.com

Minto Group Inc. is a family owned real estate development, construction and management company with operations in Ottawa, Toronto, and Florida. The company currently manages more than 14,000 residential rental homes and apartments in Ottawa and Toronto and carries a commercial portfolio of more than 2 million square feet of office, retail and industrial space. Minto provides quality residential and commercial accommodations to satisfy the needs of the marketplace as well support and enhance the growth and well being of the communities in which it operates. Since 1955, Minto has built more than 67,000 new homes.