T his might be news to you our dear reader, but the University of Ottawa is a bit of a powerhouse when it comes to sustainable transportation. It might not be apparent right away, but the more you peel back the layers of this onion, the more it becomes obvious. And why not? All the ingredients are right in front of you... an urban campus, right in the middle of a dense city centre, with multiple entry points, and a lot of surrounding communities, not to mention some great amenities too. The University's main campus is serviced by Ottawa's light rail transit system, it has several bike lanes flowing into it, and in the winter time, you can even skate to the campus. A lot of these are because of the great location of the campus, but don't be fooled, the University has worked hard to make a lot of these programs a thing for the community. A car share, rideshare, and carpooling program for drivers... a U-pass, shuttle bus, and the Para Transpo program for public transportation ...

A fun thought dawned on me today while I was chatting with the team at our weekly meeting. It has been over 10 since we introduced the Farm Basket at uOttawa... 10 years! Honestly most appliances don't even last that long. I though this might be a good chance to talk about the origins of the program and how we might grow this program (pun intended) for the next decade. Ten years ago, an international student (Coraline) came to intern at our office with the express interest of starting a Community Supported Agricultural program, more commonly known as a CSA. Coraline was quickly able to find a farm that fit all our criteria. We wanted...  A farm that could offer certified organic vegetables That was local and could deliver to the campus Starting a food movement on campus Our three criteria were important to us because we wanted to create a sustainable food system on campus, with one of the focal points being to source organic food. Sure, " the 100 mile diet " was a big cr...

We want to start the year off by offering you a fresh twist on the big sustainability stories from uOttawa from 2025. Instead of condensing the stories into a tight list and trendy infographic, we want to "unwrap" these stories to tell you about the impact to the uOttawa campus. It's the start of a new semester and I am sure that last thing you want to do is scroll through yet another "wrapped" list for last year. Sure, these wrapped lists have become really popular over the years with Spotify leading the way; offering you a look back at your personal music consumption over the previous 12 months. This was quickly adopted by every company in the world, offering not so much a personal experience of the year's events, but more of an self ingratiating celebration of their own accomplishments. Essentially, they took the "year in review" concept, relabeled it with the trendier "wrapped" title, and hoped no one would notice.  Well, we noticed a...

That's right friends, the Free Store is getting a new space, a new look, and a couple of new features... but more about that in a minute. First, a little background. The Free Store has been bringing a unique retail experience to University of Ottawa students for two decades! What is that experience you ask? Well everything is free for starters. But, really the biggest feature is that everything in the store was considered garbage at one point. And so, the store is quite literally keeping things out of landfill while saving the customers money. The first time anything resembling a Free Store happened was back in 2007, when a bunch of items were left in some residence rooms and then given back to new students arriving on campus in September. That first event was very modest... imagine a picnic blanket on the grass with a sign that said "FREE" in front of a few donated items. Fast-forward a couple of years and the Free Store has moved into its own retail space and grown imm...

uOttawa heat map art. Monday July 22nd might have been a wholly unmarkable day for you. It was a fairly hot day in a fairly hot month, which of course has been part of a fairly hot summer. If you live in this little part of the world, you might have noticed a lack of rain and a hint of smoke in the air from the forest fires in central and western Canada. What you might not have known was that the record for the hottest recorded in human history was being set. Many news outlets reported on the record breaking temperature  but it didn't get much coverage (the world has a lot of complicated things happening right now). I think this kind of information tends to make people's eyes glaze over. "Oh yes, yet another time we broke the record for the hottest day..." It seems to happen so often that people have become numb to the news.  This is problematic because the increase in temperature has a bunch of very serious and dangerous impacts to the natural environment and to peop...

Concept art of the transformation garden There are many reasons why you might want to create a garden. Gardens are spaces where nature and recreation come together to create a sense of calmness or a place to escape. Often gardens are covered with greenery (planned or natural), they have places to sit or things to see. They sometimes focus on growing food; or providing habitat for pollinators; or gathering together rare or native plants. Sometimes you create a garden because you want to make a statement, and sometimes you create a garden to preserve the past. But sometimes you create a garden because you have lost a friend and colleague. This is one of those gardens.  Concept art of the transformation garden The University of Ottawa has dozens of gardens, or at least green spaces that could be considered proto-gardens. Personally I don't ascribe to the idea that any patch of grass is considered a garden. I think that there needs to be some something that draws you to the space and g...

Green roof on the Tabaret Building Our office has been working at improving sustainability on campus since 2006 and I am happy to say that we have had a lot of success. But one of the areas that we are still hoping to improve after all these years in our green space.  What is considered by many sustainability-minded institutions to be the crown jewel of their campus (lush green spaces) is a bit of a sticking point here at uOttawa. You see, a lot of older institutions were created through land grants or large land donations. This gave institutions the ability to finance the expansion of their programs by leasing and selling land. Not unliked these institutions, the University of Ottawa was founded based on a land donation by the Besserer family. But unlike some other land grants, it was a small parcel of land which means that since then the institutions has had to slowly try to buy up surrounding land. Sometimes this works... sometimes it doesn't. After years of purchasing land and ...

In the Fall of 2023, the UOSU Sustainability Centre launched a new program, Climate Cafés. The goal was to have a weekly drop in session for students to gather together to talk about climate issues. It's a space for sharing knowledge, grief, fear, and to come together collectively to talk about and support each other in the face of the climate crisis. Each week was a different topic or theme.  One of our favourite topics, was talking about COP, the Conference of the Parties. It was great to discuss current events as they were happening and to be able to breakdown and understand what was going on. COP is a major annual gathering where global environmental issues are discussed by many countries globally and crucial decisions are made to combat climate change. The 2023 COP28 was held in Dubai and promised to be a turning point in the global quest for a more sustainable future. The Loss and Damage Fund In the early days of COP28, significant progress was made with the realization of th...