The times they are a changing, and now so is recycling at uOttawa. This month you may have noticed that the signs on the recycling bins have changed. Simply put, the University of Ottawa has a new waste management contract and we have made some modifications and upgrades to the recycling system. Here is a complete run-down of the changes that affect you. Coffee cups are compostable One of the biggest changes to the recycling system is that you can now compost your coffee cups. As the compost system expands on campus, more and more disposable items on campus are being replaced with compostable ones. Take for example the compostable cutlery and carry away clam-shell containers available at most food service locations on campus. These items are more preferable to their conventional plastic counterparts. *Do remember though, coffee lids are not compostable and should be separated and placed in the trash bin. The only exception are the lids from Première Moisson, which are ...

Every once and a while we have the opportunity to do something wonderfully poetic. But before I get too far ahead of myself, which I often do, let's talk about Industrial Ecology. Rather than bore you with a technical definition of what it means, industrial ecology can be summed up by saying that the waste from one process becomes the food for another. And although this happens in nature all the time, industrial ecology focuses on when this happens in an industrial setting. Take for example meat processing plants that often sell the undesirable parts of the animals to pet food suppliers. Okay, maybe not my best example but it is true. Or how about lumber producers that take excess wood shavings to make paper. There are many examples of how the waste from one process can kick start another. Being a sustainability person, you can imagine how happy I get when industrial ecology happens here on campus.So here is that little bit of wonderful that I elud...