All the New Things on Campus Since You Have Been Gone

When news finally settled and it was determined that uOttawa, along with every other institution in Canada, was going to close its doors for an entire academic season, there were a lot of projects that were still ongoing.
Fast forward to almost two years later and people are starting to come back to the campus, and those projects were completed. So let's take a quick tour of some of the sustainability things that happened on campus while you were gone!

UCU Park

Just behind the UCU (near the Pivik entrance) the land has been completely landscaped and a new park was created. The small park is a 4-season park with seating, a stone dust path, and a bunch of Indigenous, native, and edible plants. If you are in the garden at just the right time of the year, you can see the wild raspberries!

Other improvements include a safer declined path to the building and an expanded terrace near the entrance doors (the former smokers pit) with a new seating area.

Morisset Window Mural

Safe Wings works on reducing bird-collisions around the city and they have been hoping to work on some projects at the University for years. This past summer, they worked with a local artist and some volunteer students to create a mural in the above-ground corridor that links the Morisset Building to the UCU, a high collision area. 

The mural was made with oil based markers and took 3 days to complete. Since the mural was completed, we are looking to see if more of these murals could be created on campus.

Indigenous Garden

This past summer, a new Indigenous garden was planted in front of the FSS building as a tribute to the Algonquin Anishinabeg Nation. The garden includes interpretive plaques and contribute to the 3rd hoop of the Indigenous Action Plan.

Mobile Garden Plots

If you visit the UCU Terrace, on the second floor just outside of the library, you will be treated to a beautiful green roof. This roof is even more green now with a few mobile garden plots, which were piloted this summer.

The garden plots are simple plots on wheels. The hope is that a model of garden like this could be deployed all around the campus where there is a lack of green spaces for gardening.

Perez Green Roof

As part of the University's new directive to replace old roofs with green roofs, the latest green roof was installed on the Perez Building. The new green roof space can be viewed from the music labs in Perez or from the 100 Laurier building.

Arts Floating Corridor

In an effort to get more plants on campus (especially indoors), a new floating garden has been installed in the floating corridor between the Simard and the Hamelin Building. It's not a huge garden but it is a start. The WallyGro eco-planters are filled with a variety of plants that can also be found in the Living Wall.
Bonus - try out the cool rocking chairs!!!

Battery Boxes

Batteries have a new home on campus. Call 2 Recycle is the new group collecting used batteries destined for recycling. There is one box located in every building on campus and each box holds a bunch of plastic bags to wrap your used rechargeable batteries.

Recycling Changes

I can't pass up the opportunity to talk about a few other recycling changes on campus. Because of the pandemic, the University introduced disposable mask recycling at all buildings on campus to reduce PPE waste going to landfill.

Also, there have been some changes to the regular recycling system. Tetrapaks (juice boxes and milk cartons) now go in metal/plastic/glass recycling. And of the types of plastics you can recycle, we now only accept type 1, 2, and 5 plastic.

Stay tuned for some more exciting new before the end of this year. 
And if you have any questions about something you've seen on campus, send us a message at sustainable@uOttawa.ca.

~ jonathan rausseo - campus sustainability expert