Most students are unaware of the University of Ottawa’s history with making campus buildings more sustainable because it was before our time. I certainly knew only the minimum before working with the Office of Campus Sustainability.    Our first attempt at making a sustainable building was the SITE building built between 1997 and 1999. SITE won many awards prior to construction in anticipation for what was planned. Unfortunately, once the building was built, it failed to be as sustainable as promised. What made this attempt a failure is that the building utilized a lot of energy. A deep energy retrofit, also known as DER, was done between 2012 to 2014 to correct some of the problems with the building. However, the giant south-facing six story atrium (essentially a giant wall of windows) continues to cause pretty significant draws on air conditioning and heating, thus using a lot more energy than what was originally produced in the building design.   To avoid any futu...

Are you anxious about the new school year? Muggy Mondays has just the thing to make your Monday (and Wednesday) mornings a little bit better! Muggy Mondays offers FREE fair trade coffee, tea, and hot chocolate to anyone who brings a reusable mug. In fact, we gave out 2,289 cups last year! Believe me when I say tremendous effort and love goes into each and every cup of coffee, tea, and hot chocolate we serve. Allow me to pass along just a snapshot of the passion that goes into each mug: VOLUNTEERS Muggy Monday volunteers are small in number, but big in heart. Most of our volunteers don't even drink coffee, seriously like only a quarter of them do, but they still arrive at 7:30am to prepare everything – and they do it with a smile! Their positive attitude will cheer you up even on the darkest and coldest mornings! Interested in volunteering? E-mail us at muggymondaysclub@gmail.com COFFEE All good coffee begins with the beans! Kicking Horse Coffee roasts only the best sh...

Our wall! What in the world happening to our beautiful living wall?! A couple of months ago the maintenance team started noticing plants dying off and so the detective work began to try and solve the mystery of the dying wall. Here’s a look at the factors which contributed to our beloved wall’s shabby appearance. Lights. Unlike the sun, the energy emitted by light bulbs slowly degrades over time. This degradation which occurred at a rate faster than anticipated means that although the lights were on for 8 hours a day the concentration of light was too low for plants to sustain metabolic activity. This degradation coupled with a sensor failure led to the current situation. A system of sensors is in place to monitor the environmental conditions of the living wall, however when this system fails it can be difficult to determine what the root cause of the problem is as was the case this past summer.  The living wall is a massive six storey high hydroponic system instal...