This semester, as part of the Green Reps, I learned a lot about waste, recycling, and compost. As part of the program, I participated in a composting campaign and audit in the Dining Hall. This is my second blog post, where I share my experience volunteering in uOttawa's Dining Hall.  In February, a team of Green Reps students volunteered for two days in the Dining Hall to help audit the compost created by consumers and to encourage behaviour change.  Why is a compost campaign and audit necessary? Most students know that the dining hall is zero waste, meaning that the only waste stream available is compost. This has positively affected the quantity of waste produced in the dining hall, but it hasn’t eliminated the problem of food waste. There seems to be a common misconception that composting is a good solution. Don't get me wrong, it is the best solution of all waste and recycling streams (and you should absolutely compost all of your food scraps), but that doesn't mean th...

 So in our lovely 24/7 Dining Hall we hear about the waste we produce all the time. I mean it’s not really waste it's all compost for us, not as bad as garbage, right. With the Love Food Not Waste event taking place last week, I asked myself the simple question: if we produce this much waste just eating, how much does the kitchen produce making the food we eat? You see the Dining Hall is zero waste but that is in the part where you and I eat. There are no straws, no wrappers, no containers, nothing that can become garbage. What about in the "back of house" where all the food is made? Is that also zero waste? Now figuring this out was a little harder than I thought so I got in contact with Maryann Moffitt from Food Services and asked her to show me around. First there were a lot of elevators and stairs in there, WOW! I would have definitely gotten lost. Luckily I had Maryann to guide me. We went right to the core of the question which meant the she actually too...

You might have seen promos around the cafeteria lately advertising the love food not waste event. You might also be wondering what even is this event? Let us explain Who Student Volunteers and Food Services What A week of promoting the reduction of waste in the cafeteria Where The 24/7 cafeteria When Mar 6-10 between 11:30-1 Why To reduce the waste produced through the cafeteria How During the week between the designated hours, student volunteers will be standing at the compost stations in the cafeteria. Their job is to reward those with empty plates and to ask the people with stuff on their plates why that is. The purpose of this is identify why so much food goes to waste (that number being 314 kg of food waste everyday). During the event there will be a table showing us what that much food looks like. The volunteers want to know if something was cooked wrong, too spicy or even just if you took too much food. Their goal is to identify the reasons food goes to wa...

There are scarce few things I enjoy more than making and sharing (and eating) food with people I care about. More than that, I love having the opportunity to change common misconceptions about vegetarians/vegan food items, food security and eco-friendly waste management through a medium as delicious as food. So I'd love to let you all in on uOttawa's best kept secret. This is an incredible initiative started and sustained by wonderful humans on our campus and in our community. It combines so many rad things like food, food waste, waste reduction and most importantly, a whole lot of love. The People's Republic of Delicious is a food collective run by student and non-student volunteers with a simple goal in mind: to Keep Campus Delicious. And this is done in such a simple manner. Anybody on campus can show up around with a reusable container and get a FREE vegan meal. Yes FREE and yes it's for anybody! The PRD used to be located in the UCU Terminus, but they ...

By this point in the school year, most of us know how awesome the all-you-can-eat cafeteria is. When you’re starving after cramming for the midterm in the library, being able to relax and re-energize there feels like heaven. The cafeteria can boast that it is Zero Waste with regards to trash, bottles, plastic, metal etc. However, there is one huge culprit of waste that most of us don’t even think about: food waste. While dining trays were eliminated to help reduce over consumption, our dining hall still turns out to be an enormous source of wasted food. To help raise awareness about this issue, the Office of Campus Sustainability and Food Services took on a mission to measure the average amount of food that is thrown out each day. Over a week long period, the average total of food tossed in the compost bins at the caf was a whopping 1,735 food servings per day! That means that every day, around 1147 pounds of avoidable food is simply composted and every 8-month school year appro...