If there was one thing that you wish you could recycle but don't think you can, what would it be? Cosmetics, shoes, wipes? Well we are looking to add a few new recycling programs on campus and we need your input!! Is Recycling Good? There are some really good arguments out there that suggest recycling systems are broken. And I am not going to lie... they make a lot of sense. On the one hand, many people don't understand that recycling is an energy intensive activity that sometimes takes more energy than it might be worth. Recycling programs, especially curbside ones, don't recycle all the products they could... or sometimes companies promise their products are recyclable but they aren't actually in your city. But on the other hand, doing something is better than doing nothing, right? Getting onto the habit of trying to recycle helps lead to other positive environmental behaviours. And asking for more recycling will help push for better recycling and events and in your c...

When news finally settled and it was determined that uOttawa, along with every other institution in Canada, was going to close its doors for an entire academic season, there were a lot of projects that were still ongoing. Fast forward to almost two years later and people are starting to come back to the campus, and those projects were completed. So let's take a quick tour of some of the sustainability things that happened on campus while you were gone! UCU Park Just behind the UCU (near the Pivik entrance) the land has been completely landscaped and a new park was created. The small park is a 4-season park with seating, a stone dust path, and a bunch of Indigenous, native, and edible plants. If you are in the garden at just the right time of the year, you can see the wild raspberries! Other improvements include a safer declined path to the building and an expanded terrace near the entrance doors (the former smokers pit) with a new seating area. Morisset Window Mural Safe Wings wor...

Did you know that you can recycle pens at the University of Ottawa? A few years ago, the Office of Campus Sustainability introduced Pen Recycling on campus as an expansion to the recycling program. There is only one problem... how can you get people to recycle something they don't know that they can recycle? Before we go too far down the rabbit hole, let's start with how pens can get recycled. It's actually really simple, we use Terra Cycle - a company that specializing in hard to recycle things. We use them on campus a lot actually. Coffee pods, cigarette butts, plastic gloves... even shoes from time to time. Terra Cycle has a team of people who disassemble things and recycle the components separately. No magic involved, just some elbow grease. The materials (like plastics) get transformed into new items like park benches. One of the programs they operate is pen recycling, which is currently free and is being covered by Staples Canada . So the first part is c...

A bunch of friends have shared the K-Cup horror movie with me recently. I getting the feeling that K-Cups are making people feel a little helpless. I mean great coffee that's prepared perfectly every time.... vs huge waste generation that is, in its own little way, killing the planet. I recently embarked on the Waste Bucket Challenge . I was challenged by our 2014 Free Store coordinators and I have been trying to reduce my waste consumption for the past couple of weeks. I think that one of the only things keeping me going is the fact that I recycle my K-Cups. That's right, they can actually be recycled. I think that the first thing you need to know is that my office is equipped with a Keurig coffee maker. When the machine appeared in our space three years ago, I wasn't crazy about the amount of waste it produced; nevertheless, the machine grew in popularity in my office until eventually everyone was getting their coffee from the machine (sadly, even me). At f...

Ever lose one of your favorite shoes and feel like it’s a shame to throw out the other one? Well you don’t have to! That lonely shoe can be recycled and made into fences, cutting boards, watering cans, and even benches. This is all done through a company called TerraCycle. They take many products that you would normally throw out and make them into something new. What I have been doing with the Office of Campus Sustainability for the past three days is cutting up people’s old shoes that have been donated to the Free Store . The shoes that don’t have a partner or are all worn out are cut so they can better fit in the box to send to TerraCycle , where they will turn them into new park benches. Cutting them up effectively doubles the amount of shoes that can fit in a box to be shipped. TerraCycle even makes it easy for you to send products to them by having pre-paid shipping labels that that be printed of their website. When they receive the product you have shipped them in the ...

Que faites-vous quand une de vos (nombreuses) paires de chaussures ne vous plait plus? Bien sûr, vous la donnez à la Gratuiterie, et quelqu’un d’autre pourra les utiliser! Mais imaginez, vous vous réveillez un matin, et une de vos chaussures a disparu, ou en tout cas vous ne la trouvez plus. Surement un écureuil ou un lutin qui passait par là… Ou bien autre scenario : vos chaussures sont très abimées après les avoir usées jusqu’au bout. Vous vous dites que vous ne pouvez pas les donner à la Gratuiterie , parce que personne ne va vouloir une chaussure toute seule ou des chaussures très abimées qui ne les protège pas du froid par exemple. Que faire alors? Pas de panique, Terracycle est la! Terracycle est une entreprise créée en 2001 par un étudiant de Princeton, dont le projet est d’éliminer le concept de déchets, surtout concernant des produits que nous considérons normalement comme non-recyclables (comme les chaussures par exemple!). Cette entreprise propose donc des programm...

When you take a look at a park bench, I bet the last thing you think is that it looks like a waste by-product. Well you might be surprised to know that many benches are hiding something from you; in fact, they are often hiding millions of pieces of what we used to consider traditional trash. The company that is behind this transformation from garbage to park benches, picnic tables, and even coolers is a Canadian company called Terracycle. The founder of this company is Tom Szaky, who was inspired by the mighty earth worm. When Tom discovered worms digest dirt into compost, at the formative age of 19, he was flabbergasted. He created a business case at Princeton University to transform table scraps into fertilizer. You can now buy "Worm Poop" in major department stores. You can even get specialized Worm Poop for certain plants. Today, Terracycle handles a lot more than just compost. The company is an aggregator of major companies, each one investing in their own particu...

Lorsque nous regardons un banc de parc, notre dernier reflexe est de voir celui-ci comme un déchet. Nous serions surpris de savoir que certains bancs ont une apparence trompeuse. Ils peuvent cacher en eux des millions d’emballages traditionnellement non recyclables. Le responsable de cette transformation de déchets à des bancs de parc, des poubelles, des tables de pique-nique ou même des glacières est la compagnie Canadienne Terracycle . Le fondateur de la compagnie, Tom Szaky, fut inspiré par de simple vers de terre. Lorsque Tom découvre ces vers de terre créateurs d’engrais, à l’âge de 19, il fut époustouflé du résultat de leur digestion. Avec cette idée il entreprit un projet d’engrais au concours de plan d’affaire de Princeton. Les vers qui digèrent les restes de table présentaient un très bon engrais abordable.  Maintenant, vous pouvez acheter l’engrais  de vers de terre (worm poop) dans de grosses succursales. Vous pourriez même obtenir de l’engrais spécialisé à ...

BRING US YOUR USED BRITA FILTERS AND COFFEE SACHETS! Vous ne savez jamais quoi faire de vos filtres à eau usagés et vos sacs de café? Et bien vous pouvez maintenant les recycler! Emportez-nous vos filtres Brita et sachets de café usagés pour être transformés en de nouveaux produits tels que des brosses à dents, bancs de parcs ou planches à couper. De plus, Pour chaque sachet Nabob ramassé nous pouvons faire un don de $0,02 à un organisme de bienfaisance de notre choix – La Banque Alimentaire. Les filtres Brita seront recyclés à travers le programme Preserve (pour plus d’info : http://www.preserveproducts.com/recycling/britafilters.html#canada) et les sachets de cafés seront recyclés à travers le programme TerraCycle (pour plus d’info : http://www.terracycle.ca/fr-CA/brigades/coffee-bag-brigade.html). Qu’est-ce que TerraCycle? Le but de TerraCycle est d’éliminer le concept de déchet. Ils font cela en créant des réseaux de collecte nationaux pour des produits traditionnellem...