The University of Ottawa community garden on King Edward has been around for some time. It is a place where staff, students, and Sandy Hill community members are encouraged to grow their own food and preserve green spaces. Not everyone has the opportunity or space to garden; it is therefore very important to have community gardens as they give individuals the ability to grow and have access to their organic fruits and vegetables. Recently, the University of Ottawa has constructed seven raised bed gardens, built with the help of some reused materials on campus (old banners from Alumni week are being used as moisture barriers). For those who don’t know, raised bed gardens are elevated boxes filled with soil separated from the ground to grow plants. This method of gardening comes with many advantages. First, gardeners tend to suffer from less back pain because they do not have to bend over as much to do their gardening. It also makes it easier to access if you are in a wheelchair o...

We were able to accomplish quite a bit last year to make our campus more sustainable! Take a look at some of the awesome things that happened, from transportation, to recycling, and more. Thank you, uOttawa students, staff, and community members, for helping us make our campus as green as it can be. Record Waste Diversion Rate The University has reached a record waste diversion rate of 64.5%! That means that 64.5% of materials from the campus did not go to the landfill because we reused or recycled them. Thank you for recycling! Thank you, volunteers! This year, our amazing volunteers contributed a collective 4,220 hours towards sustainability efforts on campus. Thank you to our Free Store volunteers, Muggy Mondays volunteers, and Community Service Learning volunteers, as well as those who helped out with other events. Your contributions are very valuable and appreciated.  Introducing VeloGo bike sharing program on campus  You may have seen thes...

Sometimes it is all too easy to look at the deluge of environmental bad news and feel helpless in the face of the impending doom. Rising sea levels, species in decline, toxic air floating over toxic lakes. Current events fuel distopian nightmares of a future that has droughts on top of floods, ice storms on top of heat waves, and an environment turned topsy-turvy. But we have to remember that the future is not written in stone. For every environmental woe there is an environmental win. As you read these words, there are cities banning plastic bags, countries signing into law aggressive emissions standards, and globally, the rate of growth for renewable energy is outpacing fossil energy. This summer our office decided that we could do something more to improve the campus footprint and so we launched an agricultural demonstration project. This is not new idea. McGill and Ryerson are two institutions that already grow food on campus and reap the benefits. A little known fact; gro...

You can smell it in the air. The snow is melting, birds are signing, and before you know it, the very first buds will burst forth from the trees! SPRING IS HERE! Okay, maybe we aren't quite there yet but it certainly is time to start thinking about your garden. Devoted fans of our office already know that we offer community garden plots through a partnership with the SFUO and OPIRG. The plots are first come, first serve and I would be remiss if I didn't tell you to book a space right now if you want one. But this isn't a post about our community gardens, well not exactly. This summer, the Office of Campus Sustainability, will be conducting an agricultural demonstration project. We are hoping to prove that we can grow food on campus that could be sold on campus. At the same time we are also hoping to create a new green space. But rather than telling you what we are trying to do, how about I just show you what we have in mind. Now, there is no way that we are...

I was listening to the radio the other day and some talk show host mentioned this "new fad for fresh and local food". I kind of didn't even notice it at first, but then I started thinking about it. New fad? Fresh food is a new fad, like people would gladly purchase old and artificial food instead? And local food? I would imagine for the majority of human history, the bulk of anyone's diet was local food. Well, I guess if this new fad is making its way around the globe than I might as well tell you how you can jump on the band wagon too. Most of this information is specific to the University of Ottawa but this kind of stuff can be done any where. 1. Join the Good Food Box or a CSA The Good Food Box is a basically a wholesale buying club for fresh food. Similar to a CSA (community supported agriculture), you need only purchase a box and one or more local farmers fills up your box with delicious goodies. The box is delivered to the campus (or even right to your ...

It was another great year at the uOttawa community garden , and for all intents and purposes, I think that it was actually one of the greatest years we've had to date. From my personal recollection, there were a couple of great things worth mentioning. First, the garden was given a much deserved face lift. A bunch of beautiful unfinished cedar planks were used to delineate the plot spaces, making them not only more visually appealing, but also more functional (setting clear limits for where to plant and where people can walk). There were also a few more work-bee parties, an opportunity for the community garden members to get together and help clean up the space as a group. And a few more garden meetings, a chance for members to discuss common issues about the garden space. And there were even a couple of social outings, you know... to grab a drink and talk shop. We got to do some experimenting this year, including experimenting with a hay bail garden plot! We also got a...

The sun is back in full force and that means community garden time here at the University of Ottawa. This marks our 9th year of community gardening on campus and this year we are making a couple of upgrades. If you know anything about the gardens on campus then you know that you have to be dedicated to survive the ups and downs. The first incarnation of the community garden was created in 2004 and was comprised of a couple of individual plots and two larger communal plots. The garden grew slowly until in 2009 a new location was added to augment the number of spaces to about 30. Unfortunately a year later that space was designated as the construction site of the new ARC building . Not to fret, a new location was inaugurated at 649 King Edward immediately. So here we are in 2013 with two community garden locations and almost 50 plots to work on. Things are looking pretty sweet.... but why rest when you can push boundaries? Admittedly it is hard to "push the envelop" wh...

Gardens have so many benefits that we often forget about some of them. For me one of the biggest benefits of gardening, and a reason why I am so hooked, is the amazing feeling it gives me: Stress relieving.  I have one garden in pots at home, I have a plot in the community garden, and I help take care of the Sustainability Centre’s teaching plot. I am actually looking into planting at my friend’s house and my mom’s yard, plus I spend time helping some other friends with their gardens. Anyways, I just cannot get enough of gardening.  And I am not the only one talking about the stress relieving benefits. “A recent study in the Netherlands suggests that gardening can fight stress even better than other relaxing leisure activities. After completing a stressful task, two groups of people were instructed to either read indoors or garden for 30 minutes. Afterward, the group that gardened reported being in a better mood than the reading group, and they also had lower lev...

Let's talk about last summer. Last summer we inaugurated the community garden in its new space at 649 King Edward (that's right, we won the lottery with that space). It replaced the old location which has become the building footprint for the CAPEA building. Thirty five glorious plots to serve the campus community, not bad. But we already knew that we wouldn't have enough space to meet the demand of the campus and the Sandy Hill community. So while discussing the issue with the Director of Physical Resources Service , he mentioned how McGill University was toying around with the idea of having planters that could be moved around when needed. Mobile gardens... brilliant! So the group got together and we talked about want this could look like. We had a few ideas but unfortunately there were so many things to do to get our current community garden off the ground, that we quickly forgot about the mobile gardens idea. That is until an opportunity to look at them again ...

In lieu of Jon’s recent blog on turning  wooden pallets into furniture , I decided to write my own blog on sustainable student living. Mostly because I have found myself since I started university to be very anti-Ikea. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am sure the Swedes have a lot of unique, mass produced, and cheap furniture to adorn your apartment with (you may sense some sarcasm and contradictions, I apologize Ikea lovers) but maybe I am just too crafty or cheap to commit to buying things. Thus, I have upcycled many a thing since I’ve moved to Ottawa. My tips : Find friends that are moving, or strangers, around the end of the month and pester them for shit they don’t feel like carrying to a new place, or scour the streets on the night before garbage day .This is how I have acquired the majority of my stuff; whether coming across it randomly when walking home or through friends that had no interest in packing it away and transporting it. Once you have found some stuff, customi...