Last year for Earth Day, we recapped the top 50 things uOttawa has done in the past decade to be a more sustainable campus. We promised to never try to put out that much content in one day ever again... but then 2021 happened and we didn't have to because everyone else at uOttawa shared their stories for Earth Day. Here is a recap of all the Earth Day messages that we could find shared around the campus. And you can check out our website to see some of the highlights. Impact Rankings uOttawa participates in the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings, which track an institutions progress on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. We had some outstanding results this year! Flying Less in Academia Researcher Ryan Katz-Rosene has helped author a resource guide on Flying less in Academia . The guide is meant to help reduce the carbon footprint of academics. Canadian Plastics Pact Sustainable Prosperity, an environmental think-tank on campus, has helped launch the Canadian Pla...

In honour of the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, we are sharing the University of Ottawa's top 50 sustainability accomplishments over the past decade. Of course some of these activities have been slowed down because of Covid 19, but we wanted to show everyone our dedication to sustainability and highlight the amazing work of the community. You can see all the pictures realted to these accomplishments on Instagram . The University of Ottawa placed 20th overall for RecycleMania 2020 . The University has been the RecycleMania champions of Canada 9 out of the last 10 years. The University of Ottawa has a Community Supported Agriculture program. Every week during the growing season, a local, organic, fruit and vegetable basket is delivered to participants on campus. The University of Ottawa collects unpurchased food at the end of the day and donates it to 4 local charities. The University of Ottawa became Canada’s 7th Fair Trade campus . Today, the majority of all coffee ...

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 ...