In 2011 there were a lot of positive things going for the campus in terms of campus sustainability. Some setbacks for sure, but I would like to think more positives than negatives. Here is the whirlwind tour of what the office accomplished in 2011. CULTURE The year started on a high note with the Vision 2020 process, which included an entire pillar dedicated to becoming a more environmentally sustainable campus . Unfortunately by the end of the year the Destination 2020 plan (which was the implementation phase of the visioning exercise) had dropped campus sustainability as a priority. Another setback came with the Fair Trade Campus Certification. Brought forth by students with the uOttawa chapter of Engineers Without Borders, the certification is a program created by FairTrade Canada  to get campuses to offer more fair trade selection. The program started out very strong in the Spring but slowed down in the fall as issues related to the variety of coffees available as fai...

Photo credit: Jonathan Rausseo GAPinizer, GAPalyse, GAPitite…for some reason, these do not sound like cool super hero names. They just sound slightly creepy. The thing is, I wanted a cool name like Merissa has (#mapetite) for my gap analysis/recommendation report of the never ending STARS . That’s right, this baby ain’t done yet! I spent my entire summer working on this project. Firstly, I read the manual over and over again to try to understand what the STARS committee was looking for and then create a Word document containing all the “questions”, ready to be filled out with oodles of knowledge. Sooo much knowledge. Then! It was time to browse the uOttawa directory and contact some peeps with said knowledge. This is how I developed some very important people skills: prodding, annoying, calling multiple times in one day, emailing and visiting knowledge bearers‘ offices. Needless to say word got around quickly and some people emailed me before I got to them (smart cookies). Ho...

Photo credit: Jonathan Rausseo Have you ever been involved in planning an event? Make that a large event and on campus. The amount of effort that goes into it is amazing, especially if the planners are trying to be “green”. Early this year, I attended the Sustainable Business Conference and although I was not around for the planning of the event, I was able to see the results of what I imagine to be many sleepless nights- all sacrificed in the name of being “green”. From the choice of food served at events to the selection of speakers, every decision made while planning an event has some sort of environmental consequence. It may be the decision to order from local caterers that are committed to local and organic produce or to hold teleconferences rather than have speakers travel far distances. Planning an event is stressful enough without contemplating the environmental consequences of every little decision, so I’m working on a “Green Guide” that will hopefully make this easier for pla...

Photo Credit: Jonathan Rausseo As Jon has already pointed out, we are on the final stretch of the STARS project. I know so much about STARS that it is slowly seeping out of my ears. In hopes of minimizing the seeping, I plug my earphones in, make myself a nice playlist on Grooveshark (Kat's STARS playlist) and plough through all the credits. And we are being quite efficient, if I may say so myself. En route, nous avons rencontré plusieurs pépins : personnes ressources en vacances, courriels et suivis oubliés/ignorés/brulés/disparus de façon suspecte, rendez-vous annulés, pages web contenant des infos datant de l’âge des hommes des cavernes. Malgré tout, nous nous sommes débrouillés à coups de téléphone, surtout. C’est solide, un téléphone! Mais aussi à l’aide de connaissances et de recherches ardues. The worst part was surprisingly not the slow if not absent feedback. It was often the fact that nobody seems to know what the heck STARS is. I understand, it’s an avant-garde thing f...

So I have spent this last week working with Katherine on our STARS survey. We are in the home stretch with only a couple of more days left before we report and things are getting tense. I mean in reality I can't take any credit at all for the work done to date, it has all been Katherine's doing... but I still can't help but feel a small tinge of excitement. Now I can't speak to how well we are going to do on the survey. Frankly, I would be happy just to cross the line at this point. But doing this STARS thing has really given us a good look at all the things we could be doing on this campus to make ourselves greener and more equitable. Take our course offerings for example. The STARS survey accords points to institutions that have sustainability related courses, undergraduate degrees, graduate degrees, and special programs. Points are even offered if your institution provides incentives to do research in sustainability. I think we still have a long way to go...

Photo credit: uOttawa After spending a week in bed recovering from a nasty kidney infection (watching bad Ashton Kutcher movies, reading and sleeping) I am back at work! Of course, drinking enough water to become PRS’ very own Niagara Falls and begging for kidney rubs from my chair (a lazy boy would certainly optimise productivity). Anyhow, once at my desk, comfortably seated with water, the first step was answering a gazillion emails and step 2 was scheduling meetings to get this STARS business done with! Now, don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love meeting new people and learning awesome facts about the university campus. But I’m still on the road of recovery here; I walk as fast as a turtle and the highlight of my day is going back to bed. Last Friday, I had the pleasure of meeting Andrew Zlotorzynski, a very friendly Environmental Health & Safety Officer in Gendron. As I came into his office, I shot out a joyful “Good morning Mr. Zloto….sky… ANDREW”. Fun fact is that the only oth...

Photo credit: Unknown I am now on week 4 of STARS (Sustainable Traking and Ratings System). Work is going smoothly, I do some research on the Uottawa website, send a few emails, ask many questions and drink my coffee. The campus staff is starting to get to know me as the girl who asks a lot of questions. On another note, yesterday I made myself my very own detective note book. Why do I need a detective’s notebook you ask? Well, though my employee i.d. says Sustainability Coordinator, I like to call myself a Sustainability Detective. I think the definition I found on the Urban Dictionary explains it all : “A devilishly handsome individual who investigates and ruthlessly abolishes mysteries of all kinds.” - URBAN DICTIONARY But it takes more than good looks to be a good sustainability detective. I go around campus asking questions about computer purchasing policies, cooking oil policies, waste management and then jot down the precious information in my notebook in hopes of adding it to...

Photo credit: AASHE I am now seeing stars wherever I go. And I don’t mean the massive, luminous balls of plasma held together by gravity that we gaze at romantically. I’m talking about the Sustainability Tracking Assessment and Rating System (STARS). It’s a transparent, self-reporting framework for colleges and universities to gauge relative progress toward sustainability. This assessment framework provides universities the opportunity to benchmark their progress with respects to sustainability related issues. The framework scores institutions on 300 possible points and requires that the President of the University sign-off on the report to ensure that all the information has been reported faithfully. Basically, it’s one humongous form with more questions about our university than a detective with too much caffeine in his bloodstream. I have been working on it for 3 weeks now and have just begun to get to the good stuff, which means the real research. I have been organising myself and ...