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 If clutter, wasted money, and outdated clothing describes your current situation, then stay tuned!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...