Building Down

Hey, did you see the demolition of the Child Studies building? That building beside the Vanier Building? Well if you didn’t see it you can see the hole in the ground that was left behind. Now in case you wanted to know a little bit about how green buildings make a difference you are about to get your wish.

You may or may not know but the new Social Science Tower that is going into the place of the old Child Studies Building is going to be LEED certified. Fun fact number 2, if you want to have a LEED certified building than you have to demolish the old building in an environmentally friendly manner. So when the old building was being knocked down there was a series of environmental measures that had to be implemented.

The two most notable ones were the dust control measures and the material recycling. Dust control was a nice touch and actually kind of funny to watch. It consisted of having someone using a big hose to spray water on all of the pieces of the building as it was being knocked down. Doing this helped control the dust flying around the campus; thereby saving the nasal passages of the campus community.

The material recycling of the building is also a pretty cool feature. The building was knocked down and all the pieces that could be recycled were stripped away and collected. This consisted of a good deal of metal wiring and piping, aggregates of concrete and so forth, along with other various bits and pieces. Machines peeled apart the metal from the concrete in classic cheese string fashion and created what can only be called a metal hairball.

This demolition project will hopefully mark a new standard for the University as green buildings begin to make their mark on the Ottawa City skyline.

Des carrières novatrices | World Changing Careers - partie II

Picture from Dan Thompson Design

Le lieu pour le colloque World Changing Careers (WCC) a sans aucun doute aidé aux participants à mettre leurs états d'esprit au bon endroit. Le vaste campus de l’Université de la Colombie Britannique était entouré de nature à chaque tournant : grandes vignes grimpant les bâtiments, énormes arbres partout, l'océan à proximité et bien plus encore. Voir telle beauté a suscité un profond désir de préserver les ressources de notre terre.

Nous savons tous qu'il est vrai ; notre demande de ressources et des services de l'écosystème est continuellement croissante lorsqu’il y a une baisse de la capacité de la terre de fournir ces ressources et services. « Nous constatons déjà les conséquences ; l'effondrement de la pêche dans le monde entier menace la vie et les moyens de subsistance, la perte des terres arables contribue à l'insécurité alimentaire mondiale et la réduction des approvisionnements en moyenne de l'eau potable signifie qu’il y a beaucoup plus de gens qui sont vulnérables aux maladies évitables telles que le choléra et la diarrhée » (The Natual Step-http://www.thenaturalstep.org/en/canada/ ). Qu’est-ce qu’il y a de positif dans tout cela ?Rien- faisons face à ceci et faisons quelque chose !

Un « emploi vert » est un point d'entrée pour résoudre ce problème. J'ai eu en fait, le privilège de participer à un dialogue d’emploi vert. Nous nous sommes demandés : que sont les emplois verts transformationnels ? Nous avons conclu que la durabilité ne devrait pas être considérée comme un « département » qui informe les gens quoi faire et qui est utilisé comme modèle comparatif, mais simplement devrait toucher chaque segment. Elle devrait aussi être « intégrée dans les descriptions d'emploi » au lieu d'être une initiative distincte.

En fait, il existe “ différentes nuances ” d'emplois verts. Dans le secteur manufacturier, un vert clair serait la lutte contre la pollution alors qu’un vert foncé serait le concept du Cradle-to-cradle(système à circuit fermé). En foresterie, un emploi vert clair serait un projet de reboisement ; vert foncé, mettre fin à la déforestation. Afin de créer une société durable, nous devons prendre de l’avance et créer plus d'emplois verts foncés. Par exemple, nous devons continuer à regarder comment la nature fait les choses, comme capturer le soleil ou filtrer de l'eau, et de comprendre comment nous pouvons l'appliquer à nos vies grâce à des technologies remaniés. Cela s'appelle lebio-mimétisme et il peut aller aussi loin que donner le défi aux villes à fournir le même niveau de services d'écosystème à l'écosystème natif. Pour une vidéo intéressante à propos du bio-mimétisme, consultez http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_GFq12w5WU

(à venir!)

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The venue for the World Changing Careers symposium (WCC) definitely helped the participants to put their mindsets in the right place. The University of British Columbia’s vast campus was surrounded by nature at every turn: great vines creeping up the buildings, enormous trees everywhere, the ocean nearby and much more. Seeing such beauty provoked a deeper desire to preserve our earth’s resources.

We all know it’s true; our demand for resources and ecosystem services keeps on growing while there is a decline in the capacity of earth to provide those resources and services. “We are already seeing the consequences; the collapse of fisheries around the world is threatening lives and livelihoods, the loss of arable farmland is contributing to global food insecurity, and shrinking supplies of clean water mean many more people are vulnerable to preventable diseases like cholera and diarrhea” (The Natual Step- http://www.thenaturalstep.org/en/canada/).What’s positive in all of that? Nothing- let’s face it and actually do something about it!

A green job is an entry point to address this issue. In fact, I was privileged to take part in aGreen Job Dialogue. We asked ourselves: What are transformational green jobs? We concluded that sustainability shouldn’t be seen as a “department” that tells people what to do, but more seen as cross-functional. It should be “built into job descriptions” instead of being a separate initiative. In fact, sustainability shouldn’t be a comparative model but simply needs to touch every segment.

Actually, there exists “different shades” of green jobs. In manufacturing, a light green would be pollution control whereas a dark green would be Cradle-to-cradle(closed-loop systems). In forestry, a light green job would be reforestation projects; dark green, halting deforestation. In order to create a sustainable society, we need to start thinking a step ahead and create more dark green jobs. For example, we need to continue looking at how nature does things, like capturing the sun or filtering the water, and understand how we can apply that to our lives through redesigned technologies. This is called biomimicry and it can go as far as challenging cities to provide the same level of ecosystem services at the native ecosystem. For an interesting video about biomimicry, check out:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_GFq12w5WU

(more to come!)

- danielle perreault

More Compost

As you all know the University of Ottawa is the new recipient of what appears to be the first mechanical composter in an Ontario university setting. That’s right... ici on compost!

So here’s the low down. A mechanical composter is exactly what it sounds like, a composter that mechanically composts its contents. This is different from most other composters which are typically simple wind row systems. Mechanical composting systems are typically in-vessel systems (i.e. inside a big tube) that rotate periodically.

This is a good time to add a side note. In case you wanted to know, the process of composting is very rudimentary. You take organic waste, you add oxygen, and there you have it. Composting is actually a ridiculously easy process, the goal is really just to try to keep to the bacteria in the garbage alive and they will take care of the rest.

So the university’s new composter rotates the waste inside of it every hour to keep feeding oxygen into the system. Two weeks later the organics come out the other end of the machine as compost. The machine is capable of composting approximately 200 tonnes of organics every year (that could fill up about 6 stories of the Desmarais Building), and what it generates will be used as fertilizer on the campus.

One last side note, the vermi composter currently on campus is capable of handling 4 tonnes of compost every year. Unlike the old system, which was limited by the dietary needs of the worms, the new mechanical composter can compost meat, cooking oil, milk products, wood chips, and cooked foods. It should also be noted that the cafeteria will now be using compostable dinnerware which can also go into the new composter.

PS - On Friday Friday August 21st, at approximately 12:05 am the composter pushed out it's very first load of compost.

-jon

Finally an Answer

Picture from www.greencleaningmatters.co.uk

Most people dread using those old, ineffective “hot air hand-cookers” found everywhere, but there’s a new wave of energy-efficient high-speed hand dryers on the rise. Keeping in mind, uOttawa stocks 100% post-consumer recycled paper towels, which of the two is really faster, cheaper and more environmentally friendly?

Physical Resources Services hired me for the summer and asked me to figure out the answer to this question. In our analysis, we evaluated a range of electric hand dryers and compared them to using paper towels. The results named the “Jet Towel” as the best alternative hand dryer. Designed by Mitsubishi Electric in Japan, it’s a time-tested effective high-speed hand dryer. Unlike conventional convection hand dryers, the Jet Towel uses a high speed curtain of air to “scrape” excess water off your hands.

Now, considering the resources associated with using the Jet Towel or paper towel, it is in fact more ecological to use the Jet Towel. Although our paper towel is made of 100% recycled paper and a portion of the waste is composted in our new composter, the majority of the waste is chucked in refuse bins and hauled away.

The ecological advantage of using the Jet Towel results from it consuming only electricity (which can come from clean sources), whereas using paper towels entails a constant supply change-over including manufacturing, shipping, disposal, etc. So if you look simply at the resources needed to use one of the two and dry your hands, the immediate chain of impact of using the hand dryer is smaller.

High-speed hand dryers for the win! You’ll soon be seeing more of these around campus.

- michael

Negawatt Plant Open for Business

Image uploaded from the EVO blog (check it out)

I may have titled this blog with a little bit of a misleading statement; technically the plant isn’t newly open for business, it has been open for business for quite a while but trust me... this is kind of new.

Now the second thing that I should address before I really get into this is the notion of a negawatt (what is it and why should you care). Well a negawatt is a concept that has been floating around for a bit of time now, but only as a whisper really. The idea is simple. A watt is a unit of power; 15 watts is what it takes to run your typical compact fluorescent light bulb. Now at the University we use thousands and thousands of lights so we don’t deal with watts, we deal with megawatts (a million watts).

Now take that concept and flip it on its head. Rather than generating energy, say a megawatt of energy, a negawatt does the opposite, it removes a megawatt of energy. And that’s the deal right there; negawatts are the amount of energy that you remove from the grid.

Now here is the ‘why you should care’ part. On an average summer day the University of Ottawa is generating about 5 to 6 megawatts. But every once and a while the Province of Ontario calls us up and utters the magic word – DR3. Do you remember six years ago when the eastern seaboard basically went black for a couple of days? You know the great Black-out of 2003? Well Demand Response 3 (DR3) is the Province’s answer to that black-out. They call us and we react by cutting as much power as possible, thus avoiding overloading the grid and/or having to buy expensive power from the Americans.

Now I would love to give you the impression that this event is a super top secret, high priority thing. You know... we get a call at the Power Plant, a small bureaucratic pencil pusher covered in sweat picks up the phone. His eyes widen as he hears the news. He slams down the phone and screams DR3!!! Red sirens flash, a panicked group of power plant workers pull down on dozens of levers, steam blows out of the big boiler as it slowly hums to a halt. Yeah that would be sweet but it doesn’t quite work like that. Now don’t get me wrong, my hats off to the workers at the power plant... dealing with a DR3 certainly isn’t easy. It’s just not quite like that.

Sorry, let me get back on track. So you should care about negawatts because essentially it is saving the Province from overloading the system during really hot days when everyone is trying to use their air-conditioning. The university essentially generates negawatts – a.k.a. reduces its consumption of energy to help provide relief for the grid.

Now here is the really important part that you should care even more about. The Province is willing to pay large energy users to reduce their energy loads during DR3 events. This is important, my boss tells me during one of our hallway chats, because for the first time it is giving energy conservation a chance. Rather than building larger power plants to deal with the issue, the Province is recognizing that it is cheaper to simply cut-back energy use. Let’s hope this idea is contagious.

PS- Las t DR3 event we were able to reduce the energy load of the University by 1.6 megawatts for 4 hours. This is enough energy to allow about 300 homes to stay online.

-jon

Compost

Un contenant à emporté avec le compost? Absolument!

L’Université d’Ottawa est maintenant la première institution postsecondaire parmi les autres en Ontario à se procurer sa propre machine à compost électrique. De plus, nous devançons la Ville d’Ottawa, qui planifie lancer son système de collectes organiques d’ici le printemps prochain. Tandis que à cet automne (2009), nous mettrons notre de compostage en marche en commençant par la foire alimentaire au Centre universitaire. D'ailleurs, notre fournisseur de services alimentaires, Chartwells, a accepté de convertir tous ses contenants à emporter, tasses et coutellerie jetables à des contenants à emporter, tasses et coutellerie compostables !

Brigitte Morin, Coordonnatrice du recyclage et du réacheminement des déchets : bmorin@uottawa.ca
www.durable.uottawa.ca

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Is that a take-out container with compost? Absolutely!

The University of Ottawa is now the first postsecondary institution in Ontario to purchase its own electric composting machine. What's more, we are ahead of the City of Ottawa, who is planning on launching its organic collection system next spring. We will be launching our compost collection system on campus as soon as this fall (2009) starting with the food court in the University Centre. Incidentally, our campus food services provider Chartwells has agreed to change all the disposable take-out containers and cutlery it uses to compostable take-out food containers and cutlery!

Brigitte Morin, Waste Diversion and Recycling Coordinator: bmorin@uottawa.ca
www.sustainable.uottawa.ca

Des carrières novatrices | World Changing Careers - partie I

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning. -Albert Einstein

J’ai participé au colloque de World Changing Careers (WCC) à l’Université de la Colombie-Britannique du 23 au 27 juillet 2009. Des étudiants, des chefs d’entreprise, des éducateurs, le gouvernement, des ONG et des professionnels de tous les domaines se sont réunis à Vancouver. Ce colloque a donné les outils nécessaires pour poursuivre une carrière en durabilité et comment intégrer les idées de pointe afin d'effectuer une différence positive.

Nous avons recueilli une gamme d’idées à travers diverses discussions de groupes, discours principaux et ateliers sur la façon de reconfigurer les systèmes de notre société pour répondre aux besoins futurs de notre génération. Avec ce symposium, nous sommes arrivés à réaliser que n’importe quelle carrière, que ça soit en affaire, éducation, agriculture, médias ou encore plus, peuvent facilement intégrer la durabilité afin de devenir un emploi « transformationnel vert ».

Grâce à ces blogs, je partagerai des idées que nous avons discutées lors de cette incroyable et inspirante collecte. Pour amples renseignements, visitez http://www.worldchangingcareers.com/

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I had the chance to participate in the World Changing Careers symposium (WCC) at the University of British Columbia from July 23^rd-27^th 2009. This symposium gathered students, business leaders, educators, government, NGOs and professionals from all backgrounds. It gave the tools to pursue a career in sustainability and how to integrate cutting-edge ideas in order to make a positive difference.

We stormed up ideas through diverse discussions, keynotes and workshops about how to redesign systems of our society to meet our future generation’s needs. With this symposium, we came to realize that any job, should it be from business to education, or agriculture to media and much more, can easily incorporate sustainability in order to become a “transformational green job”.

Through these blogs, I will share some ideas we discussed during this amazing and inspirational gathering. For more info, visit http://www.worldchangingcareers.com/

- danielle perreault

Carbon Offsetting

Photo from re-char.com

Whether or not you’re a fan of free market capitalism, there are a few basic assumptions you are following on a regular basis. You know that money makes the world go ‘round and that the economy is a sometimes volatile but very necessary force in our current system. You don’t have to agree with this.

I’m going to try not to give an economics lesson (without my economics texts I’ll probably fudge something ) but I think we can work off a few simple concepts that relate to the environment and how it can react to an economic system that seems, pretty plainly, not to care about it.When a corporation acts, it acts in the interest of capital, and almost never in the interest of the environment. This idea will become a more detailed blog post later.

So the title of this entry is Carbon Offsetting. Let’s talk about that. Apparently, this whole economy talk is where things like carbon offsetting come in. As we know, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas which contributes to global warming. Factories, companies, cars, airplanes, you name it – emit large amounts of these gases. Actors in the economy have had to react appropriately to adjust for this environmental damage.

Carbon offsetting is a way for companies to make up for some of the emissions they are creating while seeking other methods (or not) of reducing their emissions. They buy offsets from a company who then use the money to plant trees, help companies with fuel switching, recycle tires, or a few other programs geared at reducing carbon emissions. The “or not” part is the problem – if companies keep just paying for their offsets as if that is enough, there won’t be a shift in the way we do business.

Why does offsetting work?
In basic economic terms, offsetting puts a price on carbon, giving it value, and providing a direct avenue to have an impact on our economy. This gives incentive to companies/individuals to make choices that will be better for the environment in order to avoid the costs associated with offsetting. If all goes well maybe we won’t need offsetting companies in the future. If actors must account for their environmental damage, they may think first and recognize the imperative to balance their actions and needs with those of the environment.
It is a way of bringing awareness and encouraging other environment positive actions. I can bring up a whole lot of issues related to greenhouse gases and emissions now, like how you can reduce your emissions without paying someone to do it for you.

More creative ways of offsetting

• Consume less
• Recycle more
• Eat less meat (meat production emits high amounts of carbon compared to plant production)
• Use reusable containers for coffee, water, groceries, etc
• Lobby companies and government to change harmful practices
• Eat less packaged/processed foods
• Use alternative modes of transportation – bus, walk, bike, work from home

So, now that we’ve traversed the basics, let’s ask some tougher questions; do we want to be taxing companies or individuals for their emissions? Should individuals be treated differently than corporate actors? Do we want to be making place in the market economy for a more serious issue? Really, emissions are not something that can be solved through the economy. Many argue that this is just a start and will encourage real change. What does that real change look like? More green alternatives for individuals and companies? Does this address the problem?

You can do some of these things on your own - on campus, at home. You can encourage others to do the same. Spread the word about our excellent recycling program, our compost system, and the free store. Use the bikeshare program if you don’t have a bike. Virtucar is on campus too.

Some information taken from zerofootprint, a Canadian offset company that does offsets for AirCanada. (link to: http://individuals.zerofootprint.net/wp-content/uploads/Everything_Zero_web.pdf )

- sarah jayne

The Day is Coming

Little by little things do change, even on campus. Indeed the day is coming when there will no longer be any cars on campus at all. The University of Ottawa is slowly but surely becoming a pedestrian campus.

You may have noticed that there have been a few new additions to the campus lately, in the form of large square concrete flower beds.

The first instinct is to assume that these concrete containers are part of an initiative to keep the campus beautiful, and undeniably you would be right. The planters are filled with wonderfully colourful plants that do serve to beautify the campus... but there is more to them.

Emboldened by his new post as University Ground Keeper, Benoit has been working hard to keep the campus beautiful. And one of the ways to accomplish this is to impede the ruin of grass and plants by eliminating the flow of cars that continuously trample them.

The concrete planters have been strategically deployed on campus to reduce the movement of cars on campus in places that they shouldn’t be. Soon it is hoped that this initiative will expand to create more pedestrian only spaces on campus.

-jon