A couple of months ago I blogged about how uOttawa was going to be involved in Recycle-mania. I was pretty stoked about the idea because I knew that the university was pretty good but I didn’t really have any proof so I was really happy that Brigitte signed us up. I don’t want to sound like I was a worry wart but when you don’t have a point of reference things can seem a little tangled. Imagine my surprise when Brigitte gave me the news. We were 47th in the overall competition. Not bad I thought to myself, not bad at all. I mean when you think about it, this was the first time that we ever entered into the competition, we don’t have any composting, and Brigitte, our waste diversion coordinator, hasn’t even been in her post for 1 full year yet. Now imagine my surprise when Brigitte told me that the organizers had recalculated our results and we had in fact finished 14th overall, not 47th. I was ecstatic! I mean holy crap; we almost broke the top 10 in our first year. And the part that ...

The other day I took a walk through the Vanier Pavilion with some friends. Very soon the building is going to undergo a major renovation and it is going to be almost completely gutted and renewed. So that means that the building has to be completely emptied of its contents. And so when I was touring the building and beginning to make a preliminary assessment of the remaining contents, I was a little shocked to see that there was still a plant left in the building. Now this is going to be a tad dramatic but when I saw the plant from the other side of the locked door I immediately lunged for it. The door was of course locked and I ended up looking kind of foolish. Whatever, at the very least it really upped my greed cred. And then 2 days later I went back and got the plant (things tend to work better when you bring the right set of keys). So this isn’t the first time that either myself or Brigitte has saved plants from abandonment. Vanier is the second building that is going to be revamp...

I have already professed my hatred for litter. I think that it is really the pinnacle of laziness. Let me explain where I am coming from. What I do in my room is my business. If I mess up the kitchen, you know leave a few dishes in the sink or neglect to wipe-down the counter, then that is rude and insensitive to my roommate. The house isn’t just mine. Now if I leave my front lawn in disarray then I am being slothful and disrespectful to my neighbours and their property value. My actions have an impact on others So when some one tosses something on the ground (litters), I see it as one of the most selfish acts possible. You are basically robbing society of its right to a clean environment and depriving the public of beauty. A sprinkling of cigarette butts, a dash of disposable coffee cups, and of course a smidgen of candy wrappers, and you’ve got yourself the fixins’ for one ugly landscape. In fact the only missing element is the cliché free daily newspaper blowing around by like urba...

So it is that time of the year again. The weather is starting to get a little more tolerable, there are green shoots on some of the bushes and trees, and the GOOD IDEAS contest winners have been announced. “What’s the Good Ideas contest?” you are asking yourself. No don’t strain your mind, I will tell you instead. The Good Ideas contest is a competition for students on campus to suggest good ideas that the University should adopt. It began in 2008 with 10 prizes of $1,000 for the best ideas, as judged by a panel of campus community members. This year it is grown to 20 top prizes of $1,000. The contest was mildly ridiculed by some students because of the contest’s ironic tagline “Only one good idea per student”, implying that students were only capable of having one good idea at a time (we certainly wouldn’t want their brains to over heat). But controversy aside (and I use the word controversy very loosely), I heart this competition. It essentially provides me with an unlimited source o...