In the last five years, the University of Ottawa's Office of Campus Sustainability has partnered with the university's Housing Services to run an event called the Dump and Run . Yeah I know the name sounds silly (people usually have a prank in mind when you say dump and run) but this event is one of the most "profitable" for future uOttawa students as well as community members. It’s kind of a pay it forward program for recycling whereby first-year students in residences leave so much stuff behind, such as clothes, blenders, books, dishes, appliances (almost new by the way), electronics, handbags and much much more, that future students or community members can come by and collect everything they could possibly need for the coming year. So basically, every year is a recycle it forward year since frosh students have access to a bunch of stuff that comes from the students of the previous year and so on and so on. Now, this may sound complicated to understand bu...

I got a phone call from housing services yesterday at lunch; they had a HUGE clean-up to do, and there were going to be things which we could give at the first Free Store. When I got there, it was like a second Dump and Run: a classroom was filled with all sorts of stuff left behind by students living in the Brooks apartment residences; jackets, pots and pans (you know some 50$ pans, and some 100$ sweaters…), electronics, books, jeans, canned food, etc. (STUDENTS: WHAT ARE YOU DOING THROWING ALL THIS STUFF OUT?! STOP BUYING!) To put you into perspective, during move-in/move-out weekends, residences cleaning staff are not given permission to sort recyclables and reusable items, and we are usually stuck trying to drag all these items out of the huge 20-yard waste bins outside residences (and they are usually covered in beer, and other things I would rather not know!). But this week end, while cleaning out the residences, Housing Services staff collected all the items left behind which we...