Every year, the UI GreenMetric University Rankings for sustainability loom over my head. It is kind of a strange feeling really. I know that uOttawa is a leader when it comes to sustainability but sustainability is a broad topic and depending on how you want to measure sustainability, the results could vary. Let me give you an example. uOttawa has amazingly low GHG emissions. Compared to other campuses of our size, we are a third to half the emissions of others. But when it comes to the number of courses that we offer related to sustainability... well we have some but a place like the University of British Columbia or Dalhousie have us beat hands down. Or what about green space? uOttawa has a dense urban campus, meaning that we have a very small energy footprint, but we aren't like Royal Roads who have over 300 hectares or natural forest setting... Which one is more sustainable? I worry about what our score will be not because a bad score will reflect poorly upon our office,...

I am very happy to say that the University of Ottawa is again in the top tier of universities in the world when it comes to being a sustainable institution. ( UI Green Metric World University Ranking ) This goes out to the rabble-rousers that stocked the shelves of the Free Store even though it was impossible to ever keep them full for more than 5 minutes; to the caffeine junkies that gave away free coffee to the masses in order keep garbage out our the landfills; to the cyclists that couldn't say no to one more ride even if it was in the rain; to the paper pushers who still got the information out without having to knock down a tree to do it; to the residence herders who would always share green tips with their flock even if it meant being called a tree-huger; to the organics smugglers who would stuff old apple cores into their pockets because they couldn't stomach tossing good compost into a dirty garbage bin; to the white-collar hippies who believe that the ...

There is a very famous advertising campaign that was created by Avis back in the 90s that still makes me laugh to this day. It is the "We're Number Two" campaign, celebrating the fact that Avis had become the number two provider of car rental services in the U.S. The marketing team knew that being number two wasn't as good as being number one.... but that didn't stop them. The commercials they produced showed an ecstatic group of people waving flags sporting the number two while popping bottles of Champaign. In the commercials, there were people passing out from the shear excitement of being number two. They were celebrating like it was nobody's business. That was basically what happened at our office last week. The UI GreenMetric World University Rankings for 2011 came out and the University of Ottawa was ranked number 2 in Canada and number 15 in the world. PARTY TIME!!!! And just so you know what the GreenMetric rankings are all about, "the...