The Sustainabilitree

In our Drawing the Line series, we focus on the idea of what it would take to tackle some of the biggest sustainability issues on campus. One of the biggest questions I get is how can we eliminate disposable coffee cups on campus. Normally I tell people that there is legislation coming from the Ontario government that might actually deal with this problem. (check out the Waste Free Ontario Act ). But as the recent climate marches have highlighted, we need action now!! So let's imagine how we could eliminate coffee cups on a campus like that of uOttawa and what that might look like. Let's start with some background... FACT #1 - uOttawa has a disposable coffee cup problem. Every day, about 10,000 (yeah that's ten with three zeroes) disposable coffee cups are purchased and likely tossed on campus. The number is kind of staggering; stacked end to end, these cups would reach more than twice the height of the CN tower. When tossed into garbage bags, well.... let'...

Sometimes it can feel like a huge weight is pushing down on your chest. You hear about the impending doom of climate change but it doesn't seem like people are concerned. Every day you see people acting like it's all cool. Instagram photos from a secluded beach, or a delectable steak dinner, or a mini shopping spree... air travel, red meat, consumerism. I mean the Amazon is literally burning and all your friends are doing is wondering if you are up for a pub crawl on Friday. That feeling you are experiencing, that weight on your chest, is what people are starting to call climate anxiety. It is a recent phenomenon, although we can hardly say that anxiety is something new. What has really changed lately is the constant reporting on climate related issues. On one side, it is great that people are learning more about climate change and wanting to take action. But on the other hand, people are starting to confront the difficulty of the task at hand and it is admittedly pretty t...

 August 30th is the first and biggest pop-up  Free Store of the year. I guess the best way to explain it is like this... imagine your birthday and Christmas decided to have a coffee date, at the end of the summer, under a giant tent, just before you started your university semester... that's basically what this event is. Now whether you have been to the Free Store before or if you have never been to the Free Store, it is absolutely worth coming out to this event. Here's why... More stuff You will see more things at this event than you normally get to see at the Free Store. The event is being held under the tent in front of FSS specifically so that we can accommodate more people. At the Free Store, we can usually have about 20-30 people max inside the space at any given time. Last year when we hosted this event, we had hundreds of people at the event at any given time. We estimate over 2,000 people attended and over 5,000 kilograms of stuff was given away. More...

Part three in a three-part series brought to you by us, sharing note-worthy tips and tricks on shopping smart, reducing your textile waste footprint PLUS, how to find sustainable brands! Finding brands that are legitimately sustainable is easier than you think. Often, companies claim to have changed their business models to more sustainable, eco-friendly habits but don’t be fooled: You have to do your research! See if a particular brand follows the criteria given. WHAT TO LOOK FOR WHEN SEARCHING FOR SUSTAINABLE BRANDS So this is it, we’ve convinced you enough to join the green side.You’re not alone, Sustainable Fashion Matterz says that in 2017, the amount of Google searches for “Sustainable Fashion” had risen by over 250% from January 2017 to December 2018. But wait, how do you know if a company is truly sustainable? Follow these guidelines when evaluating the best brand for you. LEGITIMACY  Although this is rare for clothing companies, companies that do have char...

Part two in a three-part series brought to you by us, sharing note-worthy tips and tricks on shopping smart, reducing your textile waste footprint PLUS, how to find sustainable brands! According to The Canadian Encyclopedia.ca “Canada's consumption of textiles and clothing by volume is about 2% of the world's total, and Canadian mills now supply less than 50% of this amount,” That means that we are one of the largest consumers of textiles and by default, one of the largest producers of textile waste globally. Most textiles are not biodegradable which means: that ugly sweater that your Grandma gave you will probably live on forever. To combat this, we decided to compile a list of helpful tips that you can adopt into your lifestyle. REDUCE YOUR CONSUMPTION Buy only out of necessity. Meaning, buy only what you need and not what you want. Yes, that means you don’t need that same top in 3 different colours. PROPERLY DISPOSE OF UNWANTED ITEMS If you are about to donat...

When I was a student at the University of Ottawa, back at the turn of the century, there was no pedestrian zone on campus. The entire campus had traffic moving in both directions on every street. Imagine it, there was smog all over the place, little gas puddles everywhere, and you had to always watch out to make sure that a car wasn't going to bump into you. And believe it our not, there was actually rush hour on campus. Then, slowly some areas of the campus started to become more pedestrian friendly. Over the years, we have blogged about how the campus is gong to one day create a car-free core. Well, that day is here. Come September, you are going to notice a lot of changes on campus, especially if you arrive by automobile. A large section of the campus will be closed to unauthorized vehicles, marking the beginning of our transformation. And if you ask us why we are doing this... well the answer is Vision Zero. Vision Zero is a "strategy to eliminate all traffic...

A three-part series brought to you by us, sharing note-worthy tips and tricks on shopping smart, reducing your textile waste footprint PLUS, how to find sustainable brands! Unfortunately, the fashion industry was not built by green thumbs.  Planetaid.org reports that “clothes can take up to 40 years to decompose.” We are taught to buy anything and everything we might need, which results in over-consumption. So let’s prevent things from piling up! If clutter, wasted money, and outdated clothing describes your current situation, then stay tuned! DO YOUR RESEARCH Research the companies you’re going to shop from. Know what their values are as a corporation in order to support ethical practices . Most major clothing brands are starting to develop collections that have “sustainable”characteristics - but don’t be fooled, major clothing brands like these are still considered “fast fashion” companies, most likely still partake in unethical behaviours such as sweatshops and unfai...

Today is another day... wake up, brush my teeth, get to the University, spend the rest of the day emptying out the Free Store donation bin. Monday, empty the bin. Tuesday, empty the bin. Wednesday, open the Free Store... then empty the bin. Thursday, empty the bin. Friday, empty the bin. You're seeing the pattern right? This is something we are seeing at the Free Store this summer. We used to fill up the donation bin once a week, now it is once a day. We are getting record amounts of donations, which is great from a waste reduction point of view, but horrible from a resource requirement point of view. Put simply, it takes too much time to sort and clean all the new donations. We've spent some time trying to figure out what's happening (why are we getting so many donations) and we have come up with a few theories. Online shopping is taking off and that means a lot of purchases made were for things that didn't fit properly, or were passing flights of fancy...

I think we all know that the clock is ticking. Tick, tick, tick... eleven more years before bad climate stuff happens. So.... vending machines to the rescue? The pressure to start  taking concrete action on climate change is ratcheting up. There is even a new form of disquiet that seems to be surfacing known as climate anxiety . From the point of you of an academic institution, there is rising pressure to find solutions to solve the problem. Concrete actions, like reducing the amount of natural gas burned through building retrofits or switching to electric vehicles, are great but expensive. Indirect actions, such as divesting from fossil fuels or purchasing local, seem to be growing in popularity as people realize that you have to "think beyond the campus". Indeed, even if all the cars in Canada became electric vehicles by 2030, we still wouldn't reach our climate change goals ... We have to start thinking broad, across all our activities because there is no m...

I often marvel at the amount of time that disposable items serve a purpose for us before we discard them. If it takes hundreds of years for plastics to break down , surely we would hope that the useful life of that plastic would reflect its slow decomposition rate. Sadly, if that were the case I probably wouldn't be writing this post. Plastic garbage bag - 2 weeks of collecting waste and then sent to landfill (out of a potential 23,464 weeks before decomposition) Plastic wrap - 1 week to hold your leftovers and then sent to landfill (out of a potential 23,464 weeks before decomposition) Balloon - 3 days (if your lucky) before it deflates and then sent to landfill (out of a potential 164,250 days before decomposition) Styrofoam cup - 30 mins to drink your coffee and then sent to landfill (out of a potential 236,500,000 minutes before decomposition) Plastic straw - 20 minutes to drink your beverage and then sent to landfill (out of a potential 236,500,000 minutes before dec...

Hey, so I think we need to talk. I guess you could sort of say that I’m asking you for a favour... Anyway, here it goes: The Office of Campus Sustainability is holding a couple of public consultations soon and you should definitely be involved. Okay I get it, but before you say no, hear me out. This year we’ve been running around, pumping out ideas. It’s a lot of work. Lately, we’ve been trying to get some attention from the uOttawa community. The office I am working with has been thinking about ways to get you to notice us and to make you happy because it really means a lot to us. Yes, we understand that Green Spaces are great but hey, we have a bunch of other issues as well that we want to put our efforts towards. Soooo, we started developing a sustainability plan as part of the new campus sustainability policy. Now, "what even is a Sustainability plan" you ask? Good question! We want uOttawa's sustainability plan to outline who we are, what our mission i...

For those who are plugged into the zeitgeist, the number 10,000 probably has a lot of significance. The 10,000 hour rule is a controversial idea that it takes 10,000 hours to master something. 10,000 steps means that you are on your way to a healthy level of fitness. At 10,000 feet you gain enough perspective to see the big picture. But I think that one of the most import things is that it is preceded by 9,999, which as we can all agree is a pretty big number. A decade ago our office came across a really startling statistic... every day on campus 6,500 disposable cups were being used. We figured out a bunch of different ways of representing what 6,500 disposable coffee cups means... if you stacked them end to end it would be 7 times the height of the peace tower, they could fill up 10 tennis courts, it is the equivalent weight of 125 basket balls... etc. For the longest time we kept talking to people about what a huge number this was. The concept that our simple little campus ...

There are about 42,000 students at the University of Ottawa. What if each of them used just one single-use cup each day? 42,000 cups to dispose of? That is a lot of waste! Yes, single-use mugs are compostable (*not the lids!), but are students actually composting them? Not really… They are being put into waste bins, or worse, into paper recycling bins. Sometimes they still have coffee in them, which contaminates the paper that was going to be recycled. Sorting properly is one thing – (if you must use a single-use coffee mug, please put it in compost!), but how about trying to kick that habit? NO, don’t get me wrong, I would never suggest going a day without coffee! I am trying to say ditch the single-use for a month, maybe even just a week – YES, use a reusable mug! Your coffee will stay warmer, you save money, and you will help create a greener campus. Did you know you get a discount if you use a reusable mug anywhere on campus ? (Between 10 and 25 cents off your hot beverag...