I am an active cyclist. I love to ride my bike and I get really excited in the Spring when the weather warms up... because that means that I'll be back on my bike again soon. I am not a cycling expert, I don't bike in the winter anymore, and I don't go on 50km rides just for the fun of it; most of my cycling is utilitarian.  So for a person that is on their bike basically every day in the summer time, you can imagine that I worry from time to time about getting hit by a car. It has happened to me a few times in my life and so I don't blame people who don't want to ride their bikes in heavy traffic. And when I watch videos about bike infrastructure in cities, I definitely cringe when I see how unsafe it can be. (I suggest this video by Not Just Bikes if you are looking for a good watch) Now the reason I am focusing on bike safety is because I know that getting more people on bikes is better for the planet, but to get more people on bikes they have to feel safe cycli...

Working at the Office of Campus Sustainability, well it’s doing a lot of things, discovering the campus and meeting people passionate about environment and sustainability. In January, when I started working here, I met the uOttawa Green Reps, a program created to make residences more environmentally sustainable. In our first meeting, they had the idea of doing an audit of waste infrastructures in the uOttawa residences. The purpose of this audit was to recognize some of the problems with recycling in residences and to find solutions in order to improve recycling. We got together with the University's waste coordinator to make this audit happen and on March 4th we explored the waste infrastructures of every uOttawa residences. If you were one of those people in residences who saw us taking notes and photos of bins and you were wondering why, now you have your answer. We walked from residences to residences and took the stairs to audit every kitchen and every lounge of every ...

Travailler au Bureau du développement durable, c’est faire beaucoup de choses en même temps, découvrir le campus et rencontrer des personnes tout aussi passionnées d’environnement et de développement durable. Lors de mon premier mois dans cet emploi, j'ai rencontré les éco-ambassadeurs de l’Université d’Ottawa. Le programme d’éco-ambassadeur est créé dans le but de rendre les résidences plus écologiques. Lors de notre rencontre, elles ont eu l’idée de faire une analyse des systèmes de gestion des déchets de toutes les résidences de l’Université d’Ottawa. Cette analyse a pour but de reconnaître les problèmes liés à la gestion des déchets, leur trouver des solutions pour finalement améliorer le système en résidences. Ensembles, nous avons travaillé à mettre le projet sur pied et le 4 mars dernier nous sommes allés explorer les systèmes de gestion de déchets des résidences. Si vous habitez en résidences et que vous vous demandiez ce que nous faisions à prendre des notes et de...