Green Weeks is wrapping up on campus and for those of you who don't know, Green Weeks is a great initiative put on by the SFUO to celebrate all things green at the University of Ottawa. Every year it is a little different but it is always a sweet mix of education, art, and turning things around for this little planet we call home. This year, the Office of Campus contributed to two events. One was the " Imagine a Sustainable Campus " speakers panel (which I blogged about last time). The other was the "Sew you think you can mend" workshop, a workshop designed to teach you the basics about mending, patching, and repairing your clothes. I really have to hand it to Francine, Alex, Frederique, and all the others that made the workshop possible. It really was an intimate and informative affair. Participants were taught the basics of sewing and how to use a sewing machine. Then they were provided with their very own sewing kits so they could try out their new fo...

Have you ever heard of a 100 visioning session? The concept is quite popular in planning circles and is very easy to do. Imagine a city, a town, or in this case a campus.... now tell me what you think you would like it to look like in 100 years from now. At first the idea seems a like strange. I don't know what anything will look like in 100 years and I am willing to bet you probably don't either. But in a beautiful way, that is the point. In 100 years anything is possible right? My personal dream is to remodel the uOttawa campus into a forest campus, kind of like what it is like when you visit a national park. Gigantic old growth trees reaching up into the sky; small nooks for students to study and for staff to have their lunch; the sound of birds songs echoing between the branches. Maybe some of the trees could be tapped for sap in the winter and we could make our own special brand of uOttawa maple syrup. Who knows, maybe we could even have study spaces in the form of...

So 2013 has come and gone, but not without some pretty cool sustainability things happening at the University of Ottawa. The year started out with some great news about uOttawa being recognized as the 14th most sustainable university in the world by the UI Green Metric World University Rankings . This was some welcome news after all the hard work that was accomplished by the staff and volunteers at the Office of Campus Sustainability . The Food Services contract was up for renewal and this year marked the first year under a new contract that required much more stringent adherence to sustainable practices. This includes more local food, more recycling, and more promotion about green products, just to name a few. This led to two interesting initiatives in 2013. The first was the push to donate more food to charities rather than throwing it out. The second was the push to become a Fair Trade campus , thereby rendering all the non franchised coffee on campus Fair Trade Certifie...