Coca-cola helped popularize the modern image of Santa Clause... they didn't invent it but they used it to great effect to help sell their product and forever link Christmas and Coca-Cola. Every year our office participates in something known as the Alternative Student Break (ASB) . This activity gives students the opportunity to do a full semester of volunteer work in just one week. During the winter semester, we give a workshop about concepts related to waste and then we do a waste audit to see how the campus is doing. This past month we experimented with a new topic... anti-consumption! This idea came to us as we debated the topic of whether it was a bad thing that the Free Store was promoting the idea of consumption... which means consuming more resources. I won't spoil the entire workshop but I am going to give you a breakdown of what we did and what we discovered. The Workshop Our first day was spent going over the concepts of consumption, consumerism, and marketing. Ess...

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...

INSTRUCTIONS TO VOLUNTEERS BEFORE THE DUMP AND RUN So listen closely, because I am only going to say this once. We have some rules to go before you get started and my job is to make sure that you are all safe and that we collect as much stuff as possible. First things first, thank you all for coming out and agreeing to help us for the 207 Dump and Run. You volunteers represent the last line of defense between us and the landfill. If we don't collect this stuff today, it will certainly be garbage tomorrow. We are systematically going to go around to each and every residence and collect all the donations, old food, and unwanted things. The majority of the stuff you collect will be left on the donation tables in the main lobby of every building. But we won't stop there. We will move into every common room, every shared kitchen, every washroom, and collect all the stuff left behind. If you run into other cleaning staff or Housing staff, do what they say. We have partnere...

You might have seen promos around the cafeteria lately advertising the love food not waste event. You might also be wondering what even is this event? Let us explain Who Student Volunteers and Food Services What A week of promoting the reduction of waste in the cafeteria Where The 24/7 cafeteria When Mar 6-10 between 11:30-1 Why To reduce the waste produced through the cafeteria How During the week between the designated hours, student volunteers will be standing at the compost stations in the cafeteria. Their job is to reward those with empty plates and to ask the people with stuff on their plates why that is. The purpose of this is identify why so much food goes to waste (that number being 314 kg of food waste everyday). During the event there will be a table showing us what that much food looks like. The volunteers want to know if something was cooked wrong, too spicy or even just if you took too much food. Their goal is to identify the reasons food goes to wa...

Here on campus we have a lot of cool places that are sort of university secrets, ones you only find out by word of mouth, only the senior students know, etc. We want to let you in on one of the coolest ones. The Free Store, which collects 22.5 tonnes of donations every year, and you can have any of it...for free! 1. Donation bin This bin fills up and has to be emptied every week. That is awesome, so many items for you to get your hands on. 2. Dump & Run When people move out we have locations in residences where they can dump all the stuff they don’t want instead of throwing it out. Think of all the blankets... 3. Toilet paper/paper towel They have this new project where they take the toilet paper and power towel rolls that are partially used and you can take them for free. Cause who wants to buy more toilet paper? 4. Super nice staff They are actually super nice and helpful. Don’t be afraid to ask questions! 5. Gorgeous building I mean what other st...

By this point in the school year, most of us know how awesome the all-you-can-eat cafeteria is. When you’re starving after cramming for the midterm in the library, being able to relax and re-energize there feels like heaven. The cafeteria can boast that it is Zero Waste with regards to trash, bottles, plastic, metal etc. However, there is one huge culprit of waste that most of us don’t even think about: food waste. While dining trays were eliminated to help reduce over consumption, our dining hall still turns out to be an enormous source of wasted food. To help raise awareness about this issue, the Office of Campus Sustainability and Food Services took on a mission to measure the average amount of food that is thrown out each day. Over a week long period, the average total of food tossed in the compost bins at the caf was a whopping 1,735 food servings per day! That means that every day, around 1147 pounds of avoidable food is simply composted and every 8-month school year appro...