The Sustainabilitree

Sometimes when people ask me what I do for a living I tell them my job is to Save the Planet. Yeah, it's a bit cheeky as far as a response goes, but whatever... and besides, shouldn't everybody's job be to save the planet. I mean after all, don't we all kind of need the planet to survive? I suppose my job is to find different ways to do things that ultimately help save the planet. Consequently, part of my everyday job is to try to walk the talk of sustainability. You would be surprised how little things mean a lot to many people. How the smallest thing can cascade into something huge, or how the simplest message can help inspire others to dream big. Earlier this month, my boss asked me to switch offices. The downside is I had to move, but the upshot was that I would have my very own office. My boss challenged me to try to make my new space as "paperless" as possible. He wanted me to try to model what a greener work space might look like. This was of c...

Wow, it really really feels like you don't like disposable coffee cups! In the past couple of weeks I have been getting an avalanche of questions about the infamous Nescafé booth which was on campus during the month of September. I guess the whole story goes something like this. Nescafé is invited by Community Life on campus for an event last year... Things go so well they are invited back for Welcome Week this year. Nescafé hands out heaping cups of coffee to anyone who stops by their booth. Things are going well again until... an infographic comes out announcing how many cups of coffee were handed out over the month. There is a flood of comments on a Facebook post about the coffee being handed out. The post is taken down and Coffegedgon begins... I say the whole thing goes "something like this" because our office was not involved with the event. We just got a couple of sneers and complaints sent our way but we didn't pay much attention to everything h...

Very recently, my director has been talking to me about stretch goals. If you haven't heard of a stretch goal, it is essentially a goal that cannot be reached by incremental change. He tells me this story: "The emperor of Japan wanted the trains to go faster to move people around quicker. At the time, the trains were able to average about 60 mph and were limited to that speed because of the numerous mountains in the region... when a train goes around a corner at high speeds it tends to flip over. So the emperor asks for the trains to go quicker and his engineers and people in the Ministry of Transportation work on the problem and come up with a solution. Essentially they figured they could slant the tracks and help prevent the trains from flying off the track at higher speeds. They go back and tell the emperor that they can now get the trains to average 75 mph, which isn't too bad. But the emperor isn't exactly pleased. He says to his people that they don'...

I happen to believe that language is essential in creating the images we use to understand our environment, our context, our reality really. Think for instance of how marketing carefully selects words that elicit distinct images in our mind. If I were to tell you that I was going to get a hair cut, you might not give too much thought about where I was going to do that. If I say I am getting a hair cut at a barbershop, immediately your mind will flood with very selective images related to the word "barber". Maybe an old man standing beside a worn leather chair. In his hand he might be holding a straight razor or a lathering brush. The outside of the shop is adorned with one of those telltale swirling blue and red tubes, reminiscent of a candy cane. But what if I said I was going to get my hair cut at a salon? I'll bet the images conjured up in your mind are markedly different from the barber shop. Maybe it is cleaner, with more lights and more mirrors. The stylist ...

As much as it pains me to say it, summer is finally coming to an end with the start of school right around the corner.  For many people including myself, this means moving time. For those of you not familiar with moving time, it can be defined as: That last minute scramble trying to figure what you have, what you don’t and how you’re going to fit it into a tiny SUV to transport it to your new home.  It’s a stressful and exciting time all at once but we at the Free Store have a few suggestions to make your experience a little less daunting. Understand your living arrangements. I know it may sound obvious but think carefully about where you’re living and with whom. If you’re living in a traditional residence such as Thompson, Stanton or Marchand you probably won’t need any kitchen supplies as you’ll be spending a lot of your time in the dining hall especially during the first few weeks. Even if you’re an avid baker and want to show off your culinary prowess you probabl...

On ne peut pas se le cacher l’université  recommence et tous les travaux avec approches!  Pour plusieurs, tout comme moi, ceci implique qu’il est temps de déménager.  Pour ceux qui ne sont pas encore des adeptes du déménagement préparez-vous à gérer le stress de trier, de mettre en boîtes, et de tout entasser vos trucs dans une fourgonnette en direction de votre nouveau chez soi. Ce stress est à la fois excitant, mais à La Gratuiterie nous tenons à vous donner quelques conseils pour prendre le temps d’avoir un déménagement vert et responsable. Connaissez votre nouvel appartement. Ceci peut vous sembler ridicule, mais être conscient du nouvel espace dans lequel on emménage est nécessaire pour éviter d’amener des choses non utiles. Pour tous ceux qui déménagent dans les résidences conventionnelles, comme Marchand, Stanton et Thompson, il ne vous sera surement pas nécessaire d’amener des choses pour cuisiner. Avec la nouvelle cafétéria. Si jamais vous êtes mal pris...

So I got a lot of comments on my first post about going waste free. Thanks to everyone for all the questions and ideas. I think that the one that kept surfacing the most was around the theme of what is zero waste actually? I thought maybe this would be a great place to start the next installment of this series... If we want to be zero waste, well... "what is waste?" seems like a great place to start. If you have ever had the misfortune of attending one of my presentations you might remember me saying that there is no such thing as waste. This is technically true but not quite practically true. Take Bill Gates and his project to recycle nuclear waste . I think that we could all agree that nuclear waste is pretty high on the list of "difficult things to recycle"... but it is not impossible to recycle or reuse, nothing is given enough time and money. But we aren't really interested in fringe waste, we are interested in the everyday stuff like gum wrappers...

The Waste Free Ontario Act was passed on June 1st and so it is time to start thinking about how the University of Ottawa is going to become a waste free campus. For the faithful followers of the Office of Campus Sustainability you will know that we have been plotting a waste-free campus for years now. Over the past decade, the campus has increased its recycling programs to the tune of a 20% increase in the diversion rate. Lots of cool programs and some pretty decent results across the board. But lately, our campus diversion rate has stagnated. There are a couple of good reasons why the needle hasn't moved on the diversion rate recently. Let's look at a couple of these reasons so that we can figure out a path to becoming a zero waste campus. REDUCING The University of Ottawa is reducing more; instead of purchasing things, we are reusing more stuff or simply not buying it in the first place. This is exactly what happened in the 2014-15 fiscal year whereby the overall s...

uOttawa is one of 10 groups in Ontario being recognized by the Province for Environmental Excellence . In particular, uOttawa is being acknowledged for the Clean Air Community Initiative which works towards: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions Improve air quality and climate change resilience Showcase leadership and best management practices in climate change work Yeah I know, you're asking yourself "So what is a Clean Air Community?" Well let me tell you... a clean air community is a place that values the quality of the air in its space, especially as it related to the health and environmental impacts it can have for those breathing that air. So I am not just talking about greenhouse gas emissions, I am also talking about all the other stuff that gets pumped into the air that can make it less healthy.  This is important for a whole bunch of reasons, not the least of include that idea that dirty air can trigger allergic reactions, can induce asthmatic attacks, an...

We often like to blame our wasteful ways on businesses. Why do they have to have so much packaging? Why do they waste so much during production? Why can’t they make things more durable? These are all very undoubtedly valid points, but we often have trouble taking a hard look at ourselves to see why on the consumer end so much is going to waste. If there is one thing I learned from my Waste Bucket Challenge , it is that my nemesis was never businesses putting this or that thing in 10 inches of plastic packaging, rather my nemesis was my own tendency to live life in a big rush. Always busy! Always on the go! It was always very possible to avoid garbage but as soon as things started getting busy that went out the window. I forgot to tell my waiter to leave the straw behind, I stopped by the corner store for a snack, I went to get groceries but forgot to bring bags. All of these things happen to me on a regular basis but I only realized how wasteful that busy lifestyle may become, eve...

RecycleMania has launched at the University of Ottawa, and indeed around North America, and this year we are using a new tactic that we picked up from our friends over at Penn State Sustainability. It's called Toilet Paper. Basically every 2 weeks we are posting infographics about food waste and recycling in the washroom stalls around campus. The beauty of this approach is that we basically have a captive audience. The downside is that we get complaints about using paper to promote recycling. But rest assured that we did do a lot of thinking before we decided to post paper... Here are our findings. Large Posters vs. Small Posters We considered using large posters to spread the word about food waste and found that because of their positioning on the walls, the visibility of most posters is low and they are rarely read. Numbers vary wildly, but it could be assumed that between 4% and 8% people that pass by a poster will read it. Conversely, nearly 100% of posters posted i...

Every year, the UI GreenMetric University Rankings for sustainability loom over my head. It is kind of a strange feeling really. I know that uOttawa is a leader when it comes to sustainability but sustainability is a broad topic and depending on how you want to measure sustainability, the results could vary. Let me give you an example. uOttawa has amazingly low GHG emissions. Compared to other campuses of our size, we are a third to half the emissions of others. But when it comes to the number of courses that we offer related to sustainability... well we have some but a place like the University of British Columbia or Dalhousie have us beat hands down. Or what about green space? uOttawa has a dense urban campus, meaning that we have a very small energy footprint, but we aren't like Royal Roads who have over 300 hectares or natural forest setting... Which one is more sustainable? I worry about what our score will be not because a bad score will reflect poorly upon our office,...

I am going to talk today about something that happen on the university campus that really frustrate me every time I see it and which is the food waste at the caff by the students. Last year, university of Ottawa renovated the caf and it became open buffet dining hall. All the students were really happy when they found out, but there is something that a lot of people don’t realize and it is the amount of food waste that is coming out of the dining hall! Student are either part of the meal plan or they pay at the door to get in. They get access to an open buffet and they typically put so much food in their plates that most of it ends up in the compost. People are over-consuming, and over-consuming leads to an unsustainable environment. This issue makes me sad and mad at the same time for so many reasons. One of those reasons is that in my religion, and I think in many other religions as well, wasting food is something we are simply not allowed to do. Another reason is that the...