Photo credit: Jonathan Rausseo A funny thing happened the other day. As it turns out I was slogging away at the annual Campus Sustainability Report (which is a giant document which sucks up weeks of my time) when I started to create a simple block diagram. You see, I thought to myself that this year I would create infographics to help explain everything happening on campus. For those of you that don’t know, an infographic is a visualization of a set of data that is packaged into a simple graphic. Unlike pure data visualization, an infographic doesn’t always take an enormous amount of data, but it does take a bunch of complicated concepts and displays them in a simpler and more pleasing manner. Anyways, I was making infographics for the annual report because of the complexity of a lot of the Sustainability Data that the University generates. It is sometimes really hard to interpret the scale of the data that comes out of these reports. I will give you an example; in 2010 the Uni...

Photo credit: Jonathan Rausseo GAPinizer, GAPalyse, GAPitite…for some reason, these do not sound like cool super hero names. They just sound slightly creepy. The thing is, I wanted a cool name like Merissa has (#mapetite) for my gap analysis/recommendation report of the never ending STARS . That’s right, this baby ain’t done yet! I spent my entire summer working on this project. Firstly, I read the manual over and over again to try to understand what the STARS committee was looking for and then create a Word document containing all the “questions”, ready to be filled out with oodles of knowledge. Sooo much knowledge. Then! It was time to browse the uOttawa directory and contact some peeps with said knowledge. This is how I developed some very important people skills: prodding, annoying, calling multiple times in one day, emailing and visiting knowledge bearers‘ offices. Needless to say word got around quickly and some people emailed me before I got to them (smart cookies). Ho...

Photo Credit: www.footprintsnetwork.org L’année dernière, alors que je m’apprêtais à partir en voyage de « backpacking » en Europe, j’ai dû magasiner mon assurance de voyage. Plusieurs compagnies m’ont étés suggérées mais celle qui attira mon attention fut World Nomads , une compagnie Australienne. En plus d’être abordable et recommandée par la plupart des guides de voyages destinés aux aventuriers (tel Lonely Planet, Rough Guides et Let’s Go), World Nomads est une entreprise philanthropique qui appuie plusieurs projets à but non-lucratif en Australie et dans le reste du monde. Lors de l’achat d’une police d’assurance, leurs clients sont encouragés à laisser un don pour un projet au choix parmi une liste de projets parrainés par World Nomads. j’ai initialement douté de l’intégrité de la conscience morale de la compagnie, puis j’ai fait un peu de recherche, j’ai choisi un projet, j’ai donné quelques dollars et je suis partie en voyage sans plus y penser. Tout juste hier, j’ai re...

Photo Credit: Brigitte Morin Pour ceux qui ont un déjà eu un jardin, vous savez que lorsqu’on revient de voyage, il y a toujours soit une abondance de légumes prêts, ou des monstres qui se cachent sous les feuilles. La semaine dernière, à mon retour d’une vacance de cinq jours, j’ai trouvé le dernier dans mon jardin; oui, un monstre de zucchini! Mitch mesure 18 pouces de long et 14.5 pouces de circonférence. De plus, j’ai découvert deux autres semi-Mitch; Roger, Robert et Suzie. Pour vous mettre en perspective, ça fait plus de deux semaines que je mange des courgettes dans absolument tout; crus, dans mes sandwichs, dans mes pâtes, sur le BBQ, frit avec du beurre…je les donne à tout le monde…et l’a j’ai un monstre et demi de plus! Mission : trouver de nouveaux mets pour utiliser mes zucchini. J’ai fait des crêpes à base de zucchini râpés et œufs, et des petits gâteaux (grandement appréciés au bureau!) au chocolat et zucchini. Mais il me reste encore plusieurs petites courgettes qui...

Photo credit: Merissa Mueller Summer is drawing to a close and as the hours on my banking excel sheet dwindle, it seems like a good idea to summarize the projects I have worked on this summer. After all, for all you know I have been sitting at this desk watching The Mentalist and Lie to Me, twiddling my thumbs (which I did do, for a week actually- more on that later). I began my summer with data crunching. I sat in front of my computer staring at piles of data that was gathered by Eric Crighton’s first year Global Environmental Challenges class and compiling it into more useful information with the aid of pivot tables. The finished product was produced by Jon because of his talent with infographics. I also spent some of my time reviewing last year’s surveys and fixing them up to be more geographically correct (thank you, methods courses) for Crighton’s next year class. On campus we have a board entitled the “ SUDCOM ” or Sustainable Development Committee that oversees various...

Photo credit: zazzle.com Or at least that’s what I read on a t-shirt the other day. I thought the slogan was clever at first, but then I, an environmentally conscious individual, had a much more cynical second thought – Wait a second! Being ‘green’ is not a trend or a fashion statement. Sustainability is not a fad. And it saddened me that making sustainable choices in one’s life (i.e. being ‘green’) would have to be marketed in such a cliché way in order to make it sexy and appealing. Sigh... Have you seen the globe? Is it not sexy and attractive enough on its own? With all the hues of blues in both the skies and the waters, and the yellows of the sun beaming through the urban and rural lands; is the place you live not worth your effort and attention already? Sustainability - what does the word even mean? A buzzword in itself, sustainability is interconnected to concepts such as economy, environment, climate change, consumption, consumerism, ecology, global warming, social justic...

Photo credit: the web You know that feeling you get when you look around you and you see that everyone else seems to have much newer stuff than you? Sometimes it's new shoes or a new t-shirt or a new smart phone. I have kind of been getting that feeling lately, and not just because I have a cell phone that is big enough to stop a bullet. It just seems that things are getting newer so much faster... it is hard to keep up. I say this because it was time for us to retire an old friend of ours - our old website. Our first website was launched in 2008. It was designed to be an information repository for the campus about all things sustainable. The site was jam packed with almost 100 individual webpages and countless links to other sites and green info. But in 2010 the University of Ottawa decided that it was going to move in the direction of creating a new 960 template (this refers to the width of the website). Most older sites use 780 pixels for their width of their site but wit...

Photo credit: unknown Vegetarian Restaurants in and around Ottawa / Restaurants végétariens de la région de la capitale nationale 5. Perfection-Satisfaction-Promise (PSP) is practically located right on campus. Rare are such calming spaces as the one offered at PSP during the day. You will always be greeted with a smile and serenity even in the peaks of lunch hour. The menu is simple and filling. The lentil soup and mango lassies are delicious! 4. La Belle Verte ne reçoit que de bons compliments, en particulier pour ses desserts. C’est un restaurant végétalien cru. Ce restaurant offre aussi une cure de désintoxication de 5 jours pour ceux qui souhaite rafraîchir leur système. 3. Green Earth offers a wide selection of vegetarian and vegan food on its menu. Prices are very reasonable and we are told everything is quite tasty. 2. The Table vous présente un énorme buffet frais duquel vous vous servez à même les plats après quoi votre assiette est pesée pour déterminer le pri...

Photo credit: http://etap.com/gis-map/gis-map.htm Recently our department had a progress meeting to get an idea of how our summer projects are coming along. It was great to share with my coworkers all the things I have been doing, since sometimes we’re very discrete and have no clue what the person next to us has been assigned. I was happy to report that most of my projects were nearing to an end, waiting for translation or for various responses from different people on campus. However, I realized that a massive chunk (I doubt you could even call it a “chunk” because it is so huge) of what I have done this summer was not even asked of me back in May. Yes, I am talking about mapping. If you don’t recall from way back in January when I started working here, I am in Geography and Environmental Studies here at the University of Ottawa. This Geography stuff includes the use of Geographic Information Systems software such as ArcMap 10. In plain English, I map things digitally because answer...

Photo credit: Jonathan Rausseo A week ago we launched our new plastics recycling program . A revolutionary program (hyperbole) that will have a major impact on the University of Ottawa's waste diversion rate (not a hyperbole). If you haven't noticed, just about every recycling counter on campus not has that memorable yellow sign that just screams... "fill me with unusual types of plastic !" In case you haven't heard about this program, Brigitte Morin (our trusted waste diversion coordinator) has found a company that will recycle the plastic locally (to make . The only catch is the we have to collect all the plastic ourselves, stuff it in a truck, and of course make sure that none of the plastic is very dirty. Well, today was the day that we filled our first truck with plastic to send off for local recycling. Now before you freak out and say, "holy crap, you filled a truck in one week!", I need to tell you that we actually unofficially launched the progra...