uOttawa has One Million Acts of Green

two women are sharing a flower while green speech bubbles are coming our of their mouths

I wonder if you remember the One Million Acts of Green campaign that was spearheaded by George Strombolopolous a couple of years ago? I thought it was a great idea. Everyone could easily register their act of green and share it with the world. The benefit of doing this of course was that it normalized public commitments to being a more environmentally friendly citizen.

Well OMAG (that's the abbreviation just in case you were wondering), is still running strong. It is no longer just associated with the CBC and CISCO Systems; it has grown its own wings and taken flight. The group has been looking to find ways to branch off into new territory and one of the things that they dreamt up is to create a more personalized and interactive app for Facebook.

This makes a lot of sense since the whole idea of the OMAG is to share your experiences in the hopes that it will inspire others to do the same. So to that end, the group has partnered up with universities to start creating campus specific Acts of Green. The University of Ottawa will be one of the first universities to have their own One Million Acts of Green Facebook page.

There are a bunch of "acts" for people to chose from to proudly display their green behaviour. This also includes campus specific acts, such as taking part in RecycleMania, visiting the Free Store, or scoring some free coffee through Muggy Mondays. The tool also calculates the associated GHG, electricity, and water savings and posts it up on your own personal dashboard. A running tally is also kept for the campus as a whole.

The page is in it's beta testing phase and we expect that we could do a full launch in about a month. Stay tuned and in the meantime, feel free to check out the beta site by clicking here. We would love to hear your feedback.

~jON - campus sustainability manager
photo credit - jonathan rausseo