For those who have their own small garden plots, me included, the growing season is just getting started. But I want my fruits and veggies now, because I am spoiled and various other reasons that we don't have to get into. So lucky for me, I am signed up for a CSA (community supported Agriculture) at the University of Ottawa. I've already covered the uOttawa Farm Basket Program in another post but here is a brief summary just in case you missed it. A CSA is at its core a special contract with a farmer. Instead of paying for fruits and vegetables at the market, you pay for them before they are planted and they are delivered to you as they are ready. You share the risk with the farmer, but you also share the savings. This is the third year that the program will operate at uOttawa with the cooperation of Health Promotions and Food Services. The reason we got involved and brought the program on campus was pure convenience. We figured that if we make healthy food easier for ...

Yesterday I had the chance to give a presentation to the new Health Promotions ambassadors. The whole thing took place in Terminus and I think things went pretty well. My job was to explain to the group why sustainability was important for the campus and why it was important for one's personal health. In turn, those ambassadors would spread the word around campus over the course of the year (no doubt during the many many many events that they participate in). There are a couple of themes that are really easy to link to health, like food and water. And of course there are a couple that aren't so easy, like energy management and green space. I did my best to fill in those blanks. For example, energy management is directly related to green house gas emissions and air quality. The more energy we burn, the more stuff we dump into the atmosphere, the worse our air quality. Poor air quality leads to a tonne of horrible health effects. Green space and nature deficit dis...

Photo credit: zazzle.com Or at least that’s what I read on a t-shirt the other day. I thought the slogan was clever at first, but then I, an environmentally conscious individual, had a much more cynical second thought – Wait a second! Being ‘green’ is not a trend or a fashion statement. Sustainability is not a fad. And it saddened me that making sustainable choices in one’s life (i.e. being ‘green’) would have to be marketed in such a cliché way in order to make it sexy and appealing. Sigh... Have you seen the globe? Is it not sexy and attractive enough on its own? With all the hues of blues in both the skies and the waters, and the yellows of the sun beaming through the urban and rural lands; is the place you live not worth your effort and attention already? Sustainability - what does the word even mean? A buzzword in itself, sustainability is interconnected to concepts such as economy, environment, climate change, consumption, consumerism, ecology, global warming, social justic...