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...

Reading week is upon us and that means another edition of the Alternative Student Break (ASB) has arrived. Some of you might remember that last year we had about 9 volunteers that joined our office to create recycling installations on campus. The installations were pretty cool. Our volunteers made a giant chess board out of recycled bottles, a forest out of textbooks, a throne out of cans, etc... The installations were placed all around the campus to share the message of recycling. The participants of course took tonnes of pictures of the experience and told all their friends. I think that they did an amazing job and they actually helped us win RecycleMania (last year the University of Ottawa beat the next group by less than 1%). So this year we of course have to do something to help get people into that recycling feeling again. I think that we might have found the perfect balance between awareness and social marketing. This year we are going to be working on the "Breaki...

Bonjour tout le monde/Hey Everyone! My name is Julie Cook and I’ll be taking over for the amazing Brigitte Morin as Recycling Coordinator on campus for the next year while she is on maternity leave. It is an absolute honour. I’ve had the good fortune of working alongside Brigitte for a few weeks so she could teach me the ropes of this very important position. One of the coolest things I’ve done so far is to take the Pledge to Live Waste-Free for the entire eight weeks of RecycleMania . For anyone who doesn’t already know, RecycleMania is an international competition among over 600 universities and colleges in the world that compete to produce the least amount of waste and the most amount of recyclables per capita. The University of Ottawa has been the top university in Canada for the past four years, and we’re aiming to make it five! RecycleMania this year runs from February 3 to March 30th. We could really use some more volunteers for some of the awesome initiatives we have pl...

I can't say that I feel an overwhelming urge to try something new at the start of the new year, but I can assure you that many people do. My friends have been pestering me to reveal my new year's resolution for 2013 and most of my answers have been met with some rather underwhelmed expressions. I guess you can't get away with "typical" resolutions when you are a sustainability manager. So I started to do a little bit of research about what would be an appropriate resolution for 2013, you know one that is meaningful and easy to do and is good for the planet. But at the same time, the resolution has to be a bit of a sacrifice  I decided to narrow down my resolution to something related to CO2 production. I know that there are a lot of other issues out there to focus on but with so many of my friends coming back from DOHA with stories to tell, it kind of seemed like the right thing to do for this year. The next challenge was to find one of the biggest sources...

I recently had the fortunate opportunity to travel to Doha Qatar for the UNFCCC COP18.  If you don’t know what that is, it’s basically where a bunch of countries from around the world gather together and talk about how climate change is a big problem, but then find excuses (largely the economy) to do almost nothing about it. It seems countries can’t cooperate long enough to actually agree on real ambitious climate targets. Now I suppose that this all should be very disheartening, and there were definitely moments that were, but overall I’d say it was a positive experience for personal growth. I was able to meet and collaborate with other youth from around the world who like me are working to sustain our environment. Together we shared skills, ideas, and projects we had heard of, or were working on, and from that we became stronger and smarter. It reminded me of the importance of cooperation and collaboration, but more so it reminded me of the conversations I had ...

This semester the Office of Campus Sustainability partnered up with the ENV1101A course on a Community Service Learning Project. This isn't anything new because we do a project with this course every year... but this time, under the supervision of professor Tom Boggart, we mixed things up and had students work on mini sustainability projects. The change in format was to see what kind of innovation we could spark from the students if we tightened up some of the parameters. For instance, this year we gave the students a maximum budget of $1,000, limiting the scope and hopefully getting the students to think outside the box. We also had students produce a poster presentation rather than a formal report so that they could engage a more visual audience. So here are some of the results; they are spectacular. What impressed me the most were the really innovative things that people did to incorporate environmentally friendly design concepts into their posters. com...

I don't mean to get all existential on you or anything, I just want you to understand this very simple and true fact. Everything can be recycled. There is no such thing as garbage.... it is simply a social construct created by people in order to classify things that are of no use to us. Case in point, a bag of mouldy old apples... not at the top of my list of things I want to eat. Of course if I was a pig farmer that might make some decent feed for the hogs, or if I was looking for some good compost in my garden I probably wouldn't much mind a whole bag. So they weren't really garbage, they just gross you out. Or how about this, one day your grandma comes to you and gives you some of those nice sweaters she likes to knit. Only problem is that this year she was super productive and she gives you 125 of these sweaters. WTF, you can't use all these sweaters; in fact, you don't even have enough room in your closet for all of them. In a pinch you might toss some o...

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...

The concept is all about connections. Sustainability is a huge undertaking. There are so many little things to think about on our campus that it can be quite overwhelming. Where do you recycle your batteries, how far did this food travel before it got to my plate, is the paper in a textbook worse than the energy used in a laptop, why aren't there more trees on campus...etc. So how can we tackle sustainability on our campus if there are so many issues to deal with? Simple, increase the number of people that do sustainability on campus. Thus, we created an EcoNetwork. The University of Ottawa's EcoNetwork isn't a new concept, it was actually launched in 2010 and we just relaunched the program last month. The idea was to create a network of individuals that could share best practices about sustainability on campus. Things like setting your printer to double-sided printing, where to order environmentally-friendly office supplies, and how to pack a litter-less lu...

Riding your bicycle all year round can be quite the challenge. In the summer, some say that the rain and wind keep them from riding. In winter, others say that the snow, the ice, and the cold temperatures make riding sometimes dangerous. In both of these cases, many tools are available to either reduce risk or make your s ride more pleasant. Winter riding Winter riding can be dangerous, which is why it’s important keep your eye on the prize. Here are a few tips to make your ride more pleasant and safer: First, dress appropriately. If possible always have a wind breaker because it helps to keep warm when the wind blows hard. A good pair of gloves, pleather if possible, helps a lot because wind doesn’t pass through them. Bring an extra pair of socks if you feel the need or if the forecasted weather includes rain (or even worse.... freezing rain). Second, use a second hand bike. Salt and sand can destroy you bike during winter so if you don’t want to end up wasting money on re...