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,...

You could almost feel the tension blanket the entire office. For the past couple of days Brigitte, our waste diversion coordinator, would snap into her chair, quickly head over to the RecycleMania website, and then let out a little huff. The computer would diligently inform her that the results of the 2015 competition were still be tabulated. Great, another couple of hours before she could check again. It's kind of strange to think that we were a little nervous to get the results for RecycleMania this year. This certainly wasn't our first rodeo, uOttawa has been the Canadian champion for the past six years running. But this year, well this year we were hoping to set a personal best, We really wanted to set a new high point for ourselves. So ignore the title of this post for a moment and put yourself in our shoes. What could we do to engage the community? Well we ran a couple of fun events that I think were worth mentioning. Ugly Sweater Day Yes I know this isn't...

De ces temps-ci, les organismes génétiquement modifiés (OGM) et nos systèmes alimentaires sont un sujet chaud et il y a beaucoup d’information flottant, comment clarifier le tout? En Novembre, l’Université St. Paul a joué l’hôte pour le symposium d’OGM d’Ottawa. En l’honneur de cette occasion, nos amis au laboratoire d’études interdisciplinaires sur l’alimentation (LISF) ont organisé une présentation spéciale à propos des OGM et les régulations Canadiennes. C’est quoi un OGM?  Pour comprendre les OGM il faut d’abord faire un survol pour comprendre l’ADN. Imaginez l’ADN comme le plan maître de tous ce qui est dans notre corps. L’ADN contient le code pour arranger les acides aminés qui créent les protéines dont nous nous servons dans diverse réactions ou pour former différent tissues et membranes. Les tout est une science relativement nouvelle mais qui a fait beaucoup de chemin, surtout depuis le projet du génome humain (qui a séquencé tout le génome humain et identifiés les g...

If Part One was freeing myself from the shackles, Part Two was being blinded by the light. In non-Plato's-Allegory-of-the-Cave terms, this was the hump of the trip. A lot happened over the course of the last 9 days. Over 900 km and the equivalent of two solid days of biking will take a toll on anyone. However, this was not just the biking. There were tears and tantrums, hours spent lost and confused, torrential downpours and wicked winds that cut my speed in half. Quebec was not for the faint of heart. Or lungs. Or abs. Or legs. Taking all that into consideration, Theodore Roosevelt once said: “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.” So has this venture been worth doing? Most certainly. Has it been sustainable? That is a question that can not be answered so easily. Let's loo...

Last week, I was grabbing beers with an old friend and her friend that was passing through Ottawa. Matthew explained to us that he was on his way to university in a less than conventional way. He is undertaking his journey to Halifax by bike—a method which obviously interested me due to its sustainable nature. I have never been on any sort of lengthy bike ride and I asked if he would write to me about his experiences. The following describes part one of his travels. About a week ago, I left on my bike from my parents' farm in Northumberland County, Ontario, with one goal in mind: get to Halifax, Nova Scotia in 23 days. That number includes off-days in Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City. So far, after 700 km of biking, I have made it to Montreal. Although that seems like a large distance, it is barely more than a 1/4 of my journey east. I guess a logical question would be "why did I decide to do this?"  The short answer is that last fall I traveled to Europe and in...

I am just as guilty as the rest of you; I was not fully aware of all the negative implications of the Bill C-38 which was passed by the Canadian government. I am particularly worried about the changes to food our food safety laws; not only is it harder to trust most products on the shelf, but it is also harder to trust the people who make decisions regarding our safety. One major change was the Health Minister’s appointed power to grant exemptions to food safety requirements without the Parliament’s oversight, nor the need to publish those exemptions. Why should any one person or group EVER be allowed to grant ANY kind of exemption to our food safety without the requirement to publish them? Previously, any exemption made to food laws did not take effect until it was published in the Parliament’s newspaper, the Canada Gazette (remember the GMO’s being allowed into certain foods thing?). This allowed media and Canadians to be aware of changes, to express their opinions, and requ...

From the humble beginnings of researchers working out of dilapidated trailers, using plywood and tarps to keep the rain off, to the emergence of a modest but highly sophisticated research facility; the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) has transformed our knowledge of freshwater ecosystems, and produced an impressive body of research; the depth and completeness of which cannot be found elsewhere in the world. Since its creation in 1968 the ELA has faced funding cuts 3 times, previous to the government's most recent cut in the now infamous omnibus bill C-38. The ELAs research has contributed substantially to our understanding of managing algal blooms, acid rain, climate change, mercury pollution, greenhouse gas fluxes from hydroelectric reservoirs, and endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Dr. Schindler , a renowned scientist in his field was on campus recently, speaking to the importance of preserving this essential research body. Disruptions to funding and research, he argued, compr...

There are many examples of unsustainable things going on in the world and here are a few I’ve read about or seen going on in Canada. Unsustainable, the amount of pressure we put on the soil for commercial clear cutting of forests; soil can no longer retain water thus the landscape is destroyed. Unsustainable, one of the world’s dirtiest industries, “the oil sands production generates three times the greenhouse gas emission as a barrel of conventional oil”*. Up to 4 barrels of water are used to produce 1 barrel of tar sand oil “resulting in gigantic tailings [pools] of toxic waste that can be seen from outer space by the naked eye”**. This water is drained from the Athabasca (which in Cree means where there are plants one after another - will we have to change the name soon?) River in Alberta. Unsustainable, our Canadian mining industry is among the biggest in the world and also involved in 33% of mining conflicts (whether “taking over land abroad and polluting water sources, destro...

As I drive along a road to my grand-father’s house on the week-end, I can’t help but notice the monster smokestacks that spoil Sudbury’s landscape. They can be spotted from miles away; towering over the (unusually) short vegetation and blackened granite. You can actually see a line where the exposed rocks have been blackened, and the recently broken or weathered rocks are pink and light grey (their natural color). Then it happened; a terribly geeky science moment! I remembered reading about acid rain problems in Sudbury being the cause for the lack of lush forest and bountiful wildlife; all because of the mega-smokestacks: Acid rain is produced when pollutants such as sulfur dioxide (SO2) are chemically transformed to sulphuric acid in the atmosphere; they are then transported and eventually deposited in the form of rain or snow. Over 90% of acid rain in North America is the result of burning fossil fuels for energy (such as coal), and more importantly smelting or refining sulphur...

I get a lot of people asking about both Earth Day and Earth Hour. There is a consensus.... Earth Day is better than Earth Hour. The problem is I just don't believe it. Earth Day is a great day. It was started in 1970 and was famously chosen to be on April 22nd, which was incidentally the birthday of the lead ad agency guy. It was immense and did lead to some very important environmental reforms in the United States and subsequently Canada. It is widely celebrated but recently it has not reached the popularity it enjoyed in the early 70's. Earth Hour is a one hour celebration that asks people from around the world to turn off their lights for one hour as a symbolic gesture demonstrating that we can all play a role in helping the Earth. The problem with Earth Hour is that the event is so small that people tend to diminish the importance of the event. "Oh yeah.... one hour eh? How the hell is that going to help the planet?" So which one is better? Neither, they ...

Congratulations uOttawa; we are RecycleMania Canadian champions for the fourth year in a row! We achieved a 50% waste diversion rate average, and we produced only 14.17 lbs. per person of waste during the 8 weeks of the competition. Overall, with 605 participating Canadian and American institutions we placed 27th; which is pretty amazing considering that most of the institutions that did better than us had under 10,000 students – some even under 1,000. I would like to thank all of you who helped us achieve this by learning to recycle better, bringing their reusable coffee mugs, creating less waste, building waste awareness displays on campus, and especially those of you pledged to live waste-free during RecycleMania; it has a huge impact on the people around you - one of our campus departments was inspired by your stories and decided to do it for a whole week. You are also responsible for inspiring us to create the objective of becoming a zero waste uOttawa by the year 2020; wh...

Bonjour M. Ravignat, Je vous écris aujourd’hui pour vous exprimer ma déception concernant l’annulation des fonds fédéraux pour le programme Katimavik, ainsi que les autres coupures aux programmes environnementaux. Aujourd’hui, je suis encore une fois embarrassée d’être Canadienne. Je travaille au bureau du développement durable à l’Université d’Ottawa et nous avons toujours accueilli des participants du programme Katimavik; plus de 30 jeunes ont passé dans notre bureau depuis 2007. Comme vous le savez, les programmes écologiques sont presque toujours les derniers items sur la liste de fonds, et la première chose que l’on coupe lorsqu’il manque un peu d’argent (Table ronde nationale sur l’environnement et l’économie, le Protocol Kyoto…). Nous avons dû travailler extrêmement fort pour accomplir tous les projets, les nouvelles politiques, etc. écologiques à l’Université d’Ottawa. C’est très clair que nous ne pourrions jamais être l’a où nous sommes sans l’aide précieuse des parti...

Dear Canada, why do you let me down so? I can distinctly recall being in grade seven and clipping news articles about the Kyoto Protocol for a science journal. Granted, I was a HUGE geek already and adored the idea of Canada emerging as a world leader in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and saving our planet (I am pretty sure the idea involved hearts and rainbows doodled around images of trees in the margins of my notebook) but the simplified version of the protocol that a teacher explained in laymen’s terms seemed easy enough… I mean, we are a developed country with an above average standard of living and we theoretically should have been able to lower our emissions without severely compromising our growth or citizens’ lifestyles. Oh wait; there are those tar sands that we are exploiting out west- well, if it’s for the sake of progress, yes? Even with our failure at reducing our own national emissions, Canada had the opportunity to take advantage of Clean Development Mechanism...