This summer we are featuring a series of blog posts from students in the ENV 2301 course "History of Environmental Thought". We are super happy to highlight the thoughts and ideas of these bright young individuals. The New York Times - The Magic Kingdom is Going Green Climate change is a hoax! Climate change is going to kill us all! Okay now that I have your attention with these opposing opinions of climate change, let’s get into the whole point of this blog.  Climate change is neither of these things. Climate change, however, is responsible for loss of habitat,  floods, food and water shortages, and other issues worldwide... BUT we are not doomed and there are ways to stop this from happening! But how exactly can we do this? Well here are my suggestions, and they begin here at the University of Ottawa. My suggestion comes from when I took a trip to Disney World two years ago.  While I was driving to see everyone’s favourite mouse at the Magic Kingdom, I noticed...

This summer we are featuring a series of blog posts from students in the ENV 2301 course "History of Environmental Thought". We are super happy to highlight the thoughts and ideas of these bright young individuals. With close to 50,000 members of the University of Ottawa, representing both staff and student, our university is responsible for a large influx of vehicles, electricity, food resources, and other consumables that help the university run. However, given this large population, the negative effects on our climate are inevitable with our current practices, and are unsustainable. While one university alone cannot change the scope of climate change, practicing climate and earth conscious measures can help promote a more environmentally conscious system to other private and public institutions, in hope of creating a cumulative effect. Thus, for this article I propose a solution to Earth well-being and climate change, to re-adjust 7:00 pm to 6:00 am scheduling in order...

When faced with the idea of turning all the power off in your home or in rez, people kind of run away. The idea seems somehow terrifying and boring all at the same time. So we came up with (but mostly Googled) some ways to participate in Earth Hour without sitting in the dark and doing nothing for a hour *Please keep in mind that candles are not allowed in the residences at uOttawa and can be substituted by a flashlight or a electric candle. 1. Have in indoor picnic. Put a blanket on the floor, have a friend or two over, light some candles* and dig into some good finger foods. Chilling with friends and lots of food? Nothing better! 2. Host a movie night. This one is not going full 0 power but still pretty close. My floor and the floor below us in residence are having one for earth hour so that the only power used will be the tv, but all our rooms are powered down. 3. Sketch in the dark, then compare with friends when the lights come back on. Lots of fun and you might even...

The University of Ottawa just became an institutional member of the CaGBC. What does this mean? Well for the most part it means that we are entitled to get cheaper rates for training and certifying our buildings. But if you dig a bit deeper, it means that we are putting our support behind a program that understands how buildings play an immense role in building a better world. As it stands, uOttawa only has one LEED certified building on campus, the FSS Building. But, as we all know, quantity doesn't always tell the whole story. In early 2000, the SITE Building was the latest and greatest thing on campus. The building even won a couple of awards for its environmental design. Unfortunately, things didn't quite work out according to the design once the building was up and running. This wasn't necessarily anyone's fault but it did spur the University to take a harder look at their buildings.  In 2012, a deep energy retrofit of the SITE building succeeded in reducing ...

Working at a University gives me the chance to work on a bunch of really big projects with big budgets. Currently the University of Ottawa is getting started on the second phase of the EcoProsperity Project , a series of deep energy retrofits that will help save uOttawa millions of dollars in utilities costs. But that's not what I want to focus on, I would rather focus on something much smaller because I think its impacts could be much bigger. Today I want to advocate for the little things that you might not normally think of but nevertheless could be the key to unraveling our energy problems. Have you ever thought of getting rid of your screen saver, deleting the extra content in an email, or using the stairs whenever you are going down a floor or two? Now most people`s first inclination to save energy is to cut the heat and turn off the lights. Sure, that is certainly useful but there are many emergency lights that just can`t be shut off and let`s face it, who wants to sit...

Last night, as I do every year, I gave a presentation to the University of Ottawa's student ambassadors team . If you aren't in the know, the ambassadors team is, and I quote, "an essential tool for the University of Ottawa. It represents an invaluable resource for prospective students and their parents, providing everything from tours, tele-counseling and special recruitment events." So every year I give a presentation to the ambassadors about the neatest green things on campus so that they in turn will tell prospective students about them. I love presenting to the ambassadors. Not only do they dress nicely, but they also ask really great questions, which makes sense since they have to explain everything to our visitors. But last night the questions were better than my answers, so I thought I might take this post to clarify some of the great questions I got. 1. Is the University going to create a park in the middle of parking lot X? Yes, the plan is to one da...

Book worms at the University of Ottawa rejoice! You will be happy to know that you can continue to study at the library and be perfectly at ease with the fact that the library is using less energy. Admittedly energy consumption and libraries don't typically go hand in hand but they should. Did you know that library are energy pigs. Think about it, lots of people that need fresh air circulated around and books that can't get too dry or too wet or they risk being damaged. Finding that balance takes a whole bunch of energy. So today I thought I would share with you some good news from our EcoProsperity program. Now for those of you who don't know, the uOttawa EcoProsperity program is just a fancy name we have given to our energy savings program. Essentially we are going around to every building on campus and trying to make it more efficient. This past year the engineers and operations people at Physical Resources Service have been working to see what they could do t...

It’s that time of year again, the time of year when friends and family get together and celebrate simpler times. So often we find ourselves so consumed in our busy lives that we forget what this time of the year is really about, what every time of the year should be about: energy conservation. This Saturday March 23 from 8:00 to 9:00 pm Earth Hour will once again be upon us, and we here at UOttawa will be turning off the lights, in conjunctions with people and organizations around the world in the collective efforts to draw attention to the need for energy conservation. So here is a list of things you can do this earth hour (in no particular order), while your lights are off 10- Build an epic blanket fort (in hopes that it maybe as awesome as this one ( video )  9- Candle light games night 8- Candle light dinner with that special someone 7- Make and launch your own aerial luminary ( article ) 6- Glow in the dark nerf gun fight with your roomates (be careful of furni...

This might not be a new idea to some but it certainly is a new development that has caught my attention, and just maybe it should have your attention too. University powered community energy hubs are exactly what they sound like, a centralized energy system for houses within a community that is supplied by excess heat from a University campus. A little known fact about Universities is that they tend to over-produce heat in extraordinary quantities. This isn't because campuses are inefficient behemoths (although they sometimes can be), it is simply the reality of trying to generate enough heat to distribute around a large network. For instance, here at uOttawa, in order to heat the far side of the campus we need to create a whole bunch of extra heat at the power plant to ensure sure that the heat at the other end is adequate. In order to be more efficient, uOttawa has been working at reducing heating loads on campus which helps us reduce our overall costs and environm...

Sometimes it is really cool how the little things can add up to make a big difference. Take light bulbs for instance. Last year we found out that there was a new type of fluorescent light bulb on the market that uses about 25 watts instead of 32 watts. (sarcastic voice) "Biiiiggggg deal right, 6 watts... what an amazing technology!" And I would normally agree with you because 6 watts isn't that  much. But.... in this case it is 19%. And did I mention that we replaced 80,000 light bulbs around the campus, including our satellite campuses at 200 Lees and Roger Guidon. That means that we were able to shed 480,000 watts (or 460kW). So what does 460kW mean? Well it means that the University was able to save over $190,000 (assuming that the lamps are only on for 10 hours a day - 3,600hours x 6 watts = 21.6kWh per year x 80,000lamps x $0.11 = $190,800/year). The project was completed in 6 months and has a 2 year payback -  good economics...

A couple of weeks ago an email circulated around our office, the contents of which focused on lunch bags in the refrigerator. The message: don't put them in the fridge. My prognosis... best idea ever! There are actually a couple of really good reasons why you don't want to put these lunch bags in the fridge if you can avoid it. Our office was doing it because we were running out of space, but allow me to delve into the green side of this issue. They actually do take up too much space I remember when I was a kid my lunch bag was nothing more than a brown paper bag that could basically only last 1 week before it was shredded into oblivion. Nowadays, lunch bags are huge, space sucking behemoths. I kid you not, there are some people in my office who use their lunch bags as backpacks and purses. So what's the environmental impact? Well bigger lunch bags mean less space for everyone else. Think of it as the inefficient packing of the refrigerator space. If my lunc...

Yes, so it turns out that Ottawa is in the middle of the longest heat wave it has experienced since the formation of the continents some 2 billion years ago. This kind of weather puts environmentalists in a tight spot. On the one side there is the need to look out for Mother Earth: on the other, no one wants to actual experience what it feels like to melt. So, here is our quick guide to staying green when the going gets hot. Unplug everything Seriously, it may not seem like it but all the things you have plugged in at home are contributing to an increase in the ambient temperature. Think of what happens when you leave your laptop on your lap for too long or when you touch an old style incandescent light bulb. Try to put as many thing as you can unto a power bar and just power down during the day. Take cold showers This is a tried and true method to keeping nice and cool. The cold shower not only doesn't use any energy to heat the water coming through the tap, but it can ...

When I was an undergraduate student at uOttawa I was really excited when the government of Canada launched the doomed 1 Tonne Challenge program . The program had only good intentions but it completely and utterly failed to be inclusive. As a student there were a bunch of things that were being suggested by the program that I just couldn't do. Buy an efficient furnace or car, insulate my house, purchase offsets?!?!? I didn't own a home, couldn't afford a car, and what the hell was an offset? Since then I have always had a hate on for things marketed to students that students have no control over. If I told you to turn down the heat in your classroom, would you even be able to do it? So here is a list of 5 actual things that you can do on campus to reduce the campuses environmental footprint. Don't use the elevator when you don't have to  I never understood why people didn't get this but elevators suck their fair share of energy. On a floor by floor basis...

There are many examples of unsustainable things going on in the world and here are a few I’ve read about or seen going on in Canada. Unsustainable, the amount of pressure we put on the soil for commercial clear cutting of forests; soil can no longer retain water thus the landscape is destroyed. Unsustainable, one of the world’s dirtiest industries, “the oil sands production generates three times the greenhouse gas emission as a barrel of conventional oil”*. Up to 4 barrels of water are used to produce 1 barrel of tar sand oil “resulting in gigantic tailings [pools] of toxic waste that can be seen from outer space by the naked eye”**. This water is drained from the Athabasca (which in Cree means where there are plants one after another - will we have to change the name soon?) River in Alberta. Unsustainable, our Canadian mining industry is among the biggest in the world and also involved in 33% of mining conflicts (whether “taking over land abroad and polluting water sources, destro...

I wear old man sweaters; not just because I am a filthy hipster or because I am thrifty and can get them for super cheap at the Bargain Box on Laurier (though, those are probably contributing factors) but because Ottawa is freezing and I am playing an active part in reducing my energy consumption. Back home, the weather is on average 10 degrees warmer and still my house is freezing. My dad is a big supporter of layers, and he gets exasperated when one of us tinkers with the thermostat. I guess that’s where my love of chunky knits started, stealing my dad’s, mom’s, or anyone’s sweaters to stay warm around the house or in the shop. Here in Ottawa, I don’t have the privilege of controlling my heat which is a major disadvantage of being a tenant, especially because I still end up forking out the money for heating bills. Last week our heat was out and I remembered what it meant to be constantly bundled up in woollen sweaters, even sleeping in them to stay warm. My boss mentioned tha...

Photo credit: Jonathan Rausseo I will never forget when I was a student and the Government of Canada announced the ONE TONNE CHALLENGE, a program that encouraged Canadians to reduce their carbon footprint by one tonne in order to help the country meet its Kyoto obligations. And then I will never forget when I got the first pamphlet for students to take up the challenge. “Buy an energy efficient furnace – buy a hybrid vehicle – conduct an energy audit of your home”. Yeah not really the kind of thing that a poor student is going to be able to do. So, after all these years, here is a list of the top ten things you can do on campus to live a green lifestyle and reduce your environmental footprint. Do it in the dark Get your mind out of the gutter! But seriously, turn off the lights when you are not in a room. You would be surprised how many people still have the bad habit of over-lighting (using more light that you need) or ghost-lighting (lighting areas where no one is around). You can a...

Photo credit: www.abc.net.au Vous êtes-vous déjà demandé quels sont les impacts environnementaux du monde des Internet? Ou bien vous faites partie de ceux, comme moi, qui cette question ne leur a jamais traversé l’esprit? En faisant une recherche rapide sur les INTERNET, je me suis vite rendu compte que le monde virtuel des Internet pollue énormément. Bon, au point ou on est rendu on ne pourra se passer des Internet, et il ne serait pas pertinent de l’abolir puisque presque tout fonctionne par, grâce ou avec les Internet. Par contre il y a des gestes que l’on peut faire afin de minimiser l’empreinte écologique de ce réseau virtuel sur la planète, tel que garder notre boite de courriel légère. Pour en savoir plus, lisez l’article de la gazette, intitulé Le cout environnemental caché des courriels, dans notre section de nouvelles concernant le développement durable sur le campus au lien si dessous et vous jugerez par vous-même le degrés de pollution que génère les internet. Bonne lecture...