Re-life Cycle

I thought that I should make this entry based on other people’s work. Normally I love having to do very little and take credit for other people’s work, but this time I can’t really take any of the credit. And bravo to all those who had the tenacity to put a little elbow grease into their lives.

There is an old adage in the waste diversion game that goes like this, “Reduce before you reuse; reuse before you recycle; recycle before you trash.” It’s a simple thing to follow and it is structured in a way that saves the most resources. If you can reduce something than you don’t have to reuse it, and so forth and so on.

Now let’s put this whole thing into play. We are working on a furniture recycling program here at the University. Most of the time we are catering to the campus services but every once and a while we have some stuff we are going to throw out and we have some people in need. So why not give it to them?

Well that’s exactly what happened here; some people in need of chairs came and say a few models that had seen better days. But rather than giving up and going for the new glitz and glam, they took it upon themselves to give these chairs a second life. In both cases these chairs only needed a little bit of love and the results are spectacular.

It’s not easy finding someone to take old furniture. It is often stained, scratched, dented, broken, or soiled. But I often say, “If you can just look past the deficiencies and see it for what it is, you’ll be happy.” But I truly believe that having older furniture, even antiques, adds another dimension to your living room. Conversation pieces really. A story is much better when it has some substance to it. I mean who wants to hear a story that starts off with "we knew exactly what we were looking for", and ends with "so we bought it at Ikea".

There is a certain romanticism that comes along with having to put some sweat equity into your furniture collection. Be it a re-upholstering, or a coat of varnish, or even some hand-made throw pillows, the smallest things do make a difference. Even knowing that the furniture had a lineage... it once belonged to my grandmother, or was rescued from a demolition project, or it was given to me on my wedding day. These stories and sense of attachment to something more than the immediate present are valuable.
(Sorry if I sound a little Stuart McLean).

-jON

Food, Inc: Hungry for Change?

I am. Are you? Is your wallet?

A common immediate response to how to solve issues of environmental damages, poor animal treatment, and unhealthy food in the food industry is to focus on concerted individual (often read: consumer) efforts to make change. The idea that (and this is a direct paraphrase from the movie) your vote is your dollar. You tell the food industry that you want organic, good for you food, it will happen.

I saw the documentary Food, Inc at the Bytowne Cinema. I quite enjoyed it. I found it to have a lot of useful information and even be relatively accessible to folks who may not know much about the food industry. It was pretty graphic at times, which is effective and necessary however it obviously turns some stomachs.

Let’s think about this. There is something wrong with the food industry. Most can agree with this, no matter which side you are coming from. It is efficient in ways, but very inefficient in others. There is overproduction, increased risk of contamination, use of antibiotics and chemicals. This is true of meat, dairy and plant industries.

If there is a problem with the industry, something needs to change. Individuals who are able (financially and through feasible access) to purchase organic, ethical, less-processed foods should be encouraged to do so. However, many people are not able to purchase these foods, indicating the need for a different sort of action.

While movements towards labelling of GMOs, pesticide use, and the like are useful and certainly good policy changes, there are many problems associated with food distribution, access to affordable healthy food, and the food production system which is meant to overproduce, subsidize heavily, and create huge inefficiencies with impacts on humans and the environment (directly and by extension)

Food, Inc. does encourage healthier food options in primary schools. I think this is as essential form of food activism, and in fact constitutes a large scale and institutional change as opposed to an issue of individual choice. Perhaps high schools and universities will catch on to this as well, and find reasonably priced healthy food options instead of corporatizing their lunch room with fast food chains.

Our campus, for example, is well connected with agribusiness, purchasing from large suppliers and providing food highly dependent on animal products and highly processed foods like pop, chips, etc that are essentially derived from corn. We can continue to push for healthier food options that are accessible to those with allergies, intolerances, or choices, and in fact many people are doing exactly that. Check out Café Alternatif in the basement of Simard for some alternatives. Or, I hear the new café in Lamoureux will be pretty awesome. Still can’t find what you want? Talk to the People’s Republic of Delicious!

I’ll finish this post with some interesting links. I’ll also be writing more on food issues in the future…

http://www.foodincmovie.com/
http://www.seedsofdeception.com/

- sarah jayne

Who You Gonna Call?

So the Katimavikers are back in town, and not a minute too late! For all of you who don’t know about the program, Katimavik is a national program that teaches youth a valuable lesson about life, the universe, and everything. Follow this link for a much better description than mine.

Now this is the third year that Katimavik will be working with the Office of Campus Sustainability. I will be the first to admit that I perpetuate the myth of the Katimaslave (esclavavik pour les francophones). Really! I have them come in every day and work like dogs for basically no pay.

And of course this blog is about demystifying things… so here goes.

It isn’t actually easy keeping Katimavik participants motivated (that’s their real titles but sometimes I just give up and call them parts). Think about it, if you weren’t getting paid, what could I possibly offer to get you to do some back-breaking labour? Especially if some of the things we have them do is pretty monotonous.

So the solution??? We tell them what it is they are working for. Sometimes it is unstitching coats, so that they can be donated to the homeless; sometimes it is painting buckets, to give them to residence students who couldn’t recycle or compost otherwise; and sometimes it is making big signs about cycling, to encourage the campus community to get out of their cars.

Time and time again they have never failed us. Muggy Mondays, PRD, Green Campus, Physical Resource Services, the Office of the President, Parking and Sustainable Transportation, the SFUO, (really, need I go on?); every one of these groups owes an incredible debt to our participants. In fact, you might say that they are the parts that make the campus work towards being more sustainable.

Today, after helping out with PRD, I had them help re-organize the 200 Lees Campus Furniture Recycling space. And wouldn’t you know it… they exceeded expectations again. So next time you see our participants picking up garbage, painting giant murals, or handing out free coffee, you might want to thank them on behalf of us all.

Lean Green Ambassadors

The University of Ottawa is and has been a very green campus for many years; perhaps even since its inception. You don’t have to take this fact completely on faith, I promise to lay out my argument for this in future blogs, but for now let’s assume that uOttawa is one of the greenest institutions in North America.

This begs the question; if we are so green why is it that no one knows this? The answer unfortunately is complicated, but I will do my best to keep it simple. I have actually mentioned this problem in previous posts but the University of Ottawa’s green initiatives are almost all invisible. Allow me to illustrate; the University employs a district heating system which means that there are pipes under the campus that shares the heat between buildings. Not exactly the kind of thing you would notice while strolling around outside.

So the name of the game is to make the invisible... visible. Tricky, I know. But fear not, we here at the office have been dreaming up tonnes of ways to let everyone know how much energy we use (or don’t use), how much water we consume, how many trees there are on campus, etc. The solution; let someone else come up with a solution for us.

Wait hold on, I don’t want you to get the impression that we are a bunch of lazy slobs that haven’t been doing anything all this time. It just so happens in this case that the solution found us, and not a minute too soon. A big thank you goes out to the people folks at the Liaison office, especially Nancy Beland.

Just for those of you that don’t know what the liaison office does, they are the people that conduct the campus tours and receive all the prospective students on campus. The office acts as the link between the interested public and the services of the campus. As it turns out we both had a problem and a mutual solution existed.

There is brilliant and simple solution here for both of us because 1) sustainability is a hot topic these days and something that youth are extremely interested in, and 2) the Liaison office tours like 30,000 people around the campus every year and that is a lot of ears to here our story.

So thank you to all those great people at the Liaison Office who are now giving green tours of the campus. Together we can tell the environmental story of the campus and maybe get people interested in sustainability.

Le café Nostalgica compost!

Un taux de réacheminement de déchets de 60 % pour l’Université? Pas de problème! Avec notre nouveau système de compost incroyable, nous l’avons dans le sac! À partir du mercredi 2 septembre 2009, si vous mangez au Café Nostalgica sur campus, tous vos restes de nourriture sur vos assiettes seront compostés. De plus, depuis que le café a reçut son récipient pour la collecte de leur compost, ils peuvent composter tous les restes de cuisine et les serviettes. Ils nous aident à atteindre notre objectif en compostant tous leurs restes de nourriture, serviettes, et verres compostables.
Merci Café Nostalgica!

-brigitte

Trendsetters meet Offsetters

I’ve got the level with you, this is one of the most exciting projects that I’ve worked on in the history of ever. Let me lay down some context. Every year the University of Ottawa sends 500 students abroad to study in foreign and exotic places. Some people go to the States, some go to Australia. The one thing they all have in common... air travel.

So air-travel is bad. I hope that I am not shocking you with any big revelation here. Air travel is simply the highest form of energy use for travel (except maybe over really long distances but let’s save that conversation for another day). The International Office, the campus’ study abroad coordinators, have come up with a bold concept. They want to offset those emissions.

I can’t tell you how much my body was tingling when they told me this. Arguments aside about CO2 as a global warming agent, I thought that this idea was simply revolutionary. Why you ask? Because it forces people to recognize that their travel comes at a cost to the environment. Gone are the days of jumping in a plane and using more energy in one round-trip than most of the inhabitants of this planet with use in their entire lifetimes.

I know what you are thinking. Seriously Jon??? This is what gets you going? Well a bit, but what really got my attention is how we are going to offset these emissions. This summer Sarah Jayne spent many an hour working out how we value tonnes of CO2, basically how much does it cost to offset a tonne of CO2. And we came up with a number of about $20 dollars a tonne. This is about what it would cost to plant trees to remove that CO2. But the good people of the International Office wanted better. They wanted to know if we could do things locally.

Yeah, that’s right, locally! This is super cool because it eliminates some of the problems associated with purchasing offsets, especially in developing countries. So we at the office have spent our summer thinking of ways to offset locally. Everything from planting trees, to collecting compost, to recycling audits, to clothing drives, etc. We are breaking down activities into their base components so that students can earn their environmental passage.

More than anything else we are trying to make the program as fair as possible. If you travel to South America you are going to generate about 2 tonnes of CO2, and if you go to Australia you are going to use about 6 tonnes of CO2. Each student will be responsible for the GHGs they generate. For example, if you are going to Australia you would have to plant about 30 trees to offset your CO2, or recycle 25kg of aluminum, or pay about $120. Your choice. (Note these are not the actual numbers - please never use them in a report or something)

As far as I know this program is the first of its kind in... anywhere. It truly is a marvellous program because it combines environmental and civic responsibility. If you want to travel by plane across the planet, it is going to cost you this much money or this much time. Students will learn about the amount of work required to be responsible citizens. And because the projects are local, students will learn about thinking globally, but acting locally.

-jon