About 6 months ago we posted about how the Office of Campus Sustainability and the Gee Gees are working together to recycle running shoes for the renewal of the Matt Anthony sports field .  A couple of weeks after we posted the blog, the first shipment of shoes was sent out to find a second life. Well, I am here to report to you that the second shipment was sent out just two days ago. I thought it was important to follow up on this story because I personally hate when projects get started and you never hear about them again. It sucks when a program like this is just done once and when all the cameras are gone... it dies. That's not how we like to operate here. And apparently, neither do you. This second shipment contained hundreds of pairs of shoes; the donations keep rolling in!. I think that there might have even been more shoes this time then there were in the first shipment. The company was more than happy to accept this second round. And just in ...

Photo credit: Jonathan Rausseo It is official and the results favour the idea that we could one day have a completely waste free campus. A couple of months back I blogged about the fact that we were building a new Sports Field and that a component of that sports field was going to be composed of recycled shoes. Well the rest of the project has now come to an end and the results for the total diversion of waste are now available. First, there is the total waste diversion from the old field. Since the field is composed of artificial turf, we had to find a way to recycle it. There were 2 components - the turf itself, and the infill (the little rubber pellets that are used to give the field a bouncy feel (and absorb the shock of impact). The old turf was turned into PVC pellets so it can be used to make more PVC products. The infill was collected and is being used to reinforce berms in high traffic areas. Total diversion for the old field is over 90%. Second, the waste for the re...

Photo Credit: Jonathan Rausseo I just got this letter from our partners at LOOP TECHNOLOGIES. They were the group that helped u s with our new Sports Field; specifically, making sure that there is a hefty does of sustainability involved. I thought that I would share it with you. The depths to which they are willing to go to make sure that we made the best choice for the environment are ... well they are simply fantastic. "We want to share some interesting sustainability information with you regarding the Matt Anthony Field Replacement project. L.M.L chose to ship the new turf rolls from Atlanta, Georgia to Montreal, Quebec via rail, rather than truck. Using standard emissions factors produced by the US EPA, we can estimate the CO2 emissions of various methods of freight transportation. We used the following assumptions to determine the approximate CO2 produced for both rail and truck transportation: Assumptions: Freight Distance (truck or rail): 1,200 miles (1,920 kms) Weight of...

Photo credit: Jonathan Rausseo There are a bunch of little known facts that are true about our campus; one of them being that we use enough energy on campus every 5 days to send a Delorian back in time . And for all you poor fools who have never seen the Back to the Future Trilogy , let's just say that's enough power to run 10,529 homes all year long. Little known fact #2 - heat is cheap and electricity is expensive. This isn't that much of a secret if you have to pay your own hydro bills but the University spends 4 times more money on electricity than it does natural gas. The real problem is that electrical consumption keeps going up... I mean way up. In 2010 the University of Ottawa used 1,000,000 m3 less natural gas than it did in 1993 (all this while the campus has almost doubled in size). But electrical consumption during that same period has gone up over 20,000,000 kWh (about a 40% increase since 1993). Little known fact #3 - we installed solar panels on the Sports C...