Image coutesy of Metronews.ca Many municipalities, workplaces, and universities are contemplating becoming bottle water free and implementing bottle free zones. The Canadian Federation of Municipalities is urging all of its members to ban the sale of bottled water in municipally owned buildings. The University of Winnipeg became officially bottled water free last year. Even the University of Ottawa’s SFUO is taking action by not selling bottled water at their events or in some businesses, such as Cafe Alt. These changes are taking place as a response to the fact that approximately 1.5 million barrels of oil, enough to run 100,000 cars for a whole year, are used to make plastic water bottles, while transporting these bottles burns even more oil[1]. Furthermore, it costs up to 10,000 times more for bottled water than tap water, a ludicrous cost, especially when living on a student budget[2]. One Michigan company has decided to offer an “environmentally product” while benefitting from...

Have you ever drunk from one of the water fountains on campus? Did it look like this? Have you ever seen the newer fountains that have a spout that can fill up a water bottle, that are accessible, that are clean, and have cold water? That’s what I’m talking about. In the summer of 2008 and 2009, water fountain assessments were completed in order to find out the state of water fountains on our campus. Main reason being: the better fountain infrastructure we have, the more people will drink from it instead of buying bottled water. uOttawa, in its efforts to improve its status as a green university and also to improve the student experience, put aside $150,000 over two years to improve water fountain infrastructure based on the recommendations from the two reports from the summer assessments. One of the major recommendations this year was to put water fountains near food service locations like the cafeteria in SITE and UCU, since this is where most bottled water is sold. The idea is that ...

So something pretty cool is going to happen on Tuesday. It could have a substantial transformative impact on the campus community but we won’t really know until next week. But just the fact that it is going to happen is kind of inspirational in its own right. Okay, I am sure that you are quite aware that I am teasing you right now but come on; we all love a little suspense right? Well anyways on Wednesday, City Council will be listening to delegates talking about the U-Pass. This is part of a big push to get the City to adopt a U-Pass for students at $145 per semester. This alone isn’t really that amazing but I haven’t mentioned that the delegates of the various presentations include students from Carleton University and the University of Ottawa; as well as executives from both student federations. This continues a long tradition of intervention in the City of Ottawa by the respective universities. Believe it or not, the University of Ottawa has a vested interest in making sure that Ot...

This year, the bottled-water free campaign will continue. In this two-part blog entry we’ll discuss the issues of bottled water in general and on campus, and then go into the water fountain assessment later. To quote Jon in an earlier blog post regarding bottled water: “In one hundred years from now is it possible that historians will look back and think that we were crazy to try to commodity water and sell it at thousands of times the price of what it costs to get from your tap? Is it possible that we are draining precious aquifers for limited profit at the expense of future generations? And is it possible that in the future, wars may be fought over water instead of oil?” Water is a huge issue. Some people don’t have enough water, some people don’t have clean water, some people have to travel many kilometers to find water, some people pay too much for water, and some people abuse water. I’m not about to try to solve in one fell swoop all of these problems. But there are defini...

Il est vrai que l’université d’Ottawa est à l’avance en ce qui concerne l’adoption d’un programme de compost mécanique, par contre, c’est quand même un soulagement que la Ville d’Ottawa ait décidé de diminuer leurs déchets! Comme la plupart d’entre vous le savent déjà, grâce à l’impressionnante campagne de marketing, le programme des Bacs verts d’Ottawa est arrivé! La Ville collectera les matières organiques toutes les deux semaines pendant l’hiver. Elles seront ensuite ramassées une fois par semaine au printemps, à l’été et à l’automne. Veuillez consulter votre Calendrier de la collecte 2009-2011 pour plus de détails. Comme moi, vous pourriez ne pas avoir reçu votre bac. C’est peut être parce que la première étape du programme visait seulement les résidences individuelles, les petits immeubles de six logements ou moins et les résidences en zone rurale où la Ville effectue une collecte en bordure de rue. Voici les prochaines étapes de distribution : Étape 1b : Les résidents des au...

So uOttawa might have won the race against the City of Ottawa in getting a mechanical composter, but it’s quite a relief that the City is diverting waste. As most of you are aware, thanks to an impressive marketing campaign, the Ottawa Green Bin program is here! It will be collecting organic waste once every two weeks during the winter Throughout spring, summer and fall, it will be collected weekly. To know when you should put your green bin to the curb, view the collection calendar to keep track of pick up dates. Like me, you might not have received your bin. This might be because the first phase of the program only delivered to single residential properties, low-rise multi-unit residential properties with six units or less and rural village residents with curbside pick up. Here are the following distribution dates: Phase 1b : The remaining multi-unit housing with curbside collection will receive their green bins and begin participating in the program before September of 2010. Phas...

Last year the stage was set for a U-pass in Ottawa. The orchestra was primed to play a wonderful sonata: the SFUO and the University of Ottawa were ready to put forward the money and administration to get things rolling. The actors had rehearsed their lines: City council and OC Transpo had a plan laid out before them. And at the pivotal moment as the show was about to start, the audience collectively held their breath. But the curtains never opened, the spotlights never lit up, and everyone was just told to go home... no show tonight ladies and gentlemen. Well one year later and everyone is back for another show. Once again there is an opportunity to provide students at the University of Ottawa with a fare-reduced bus pass. But there are a couple of differences in this year’s campaign that are worth mentioning, and are turning heads over at City Hall. The first major change is the cost. The Student Federation is pushing for a new $145 price tag for the pass. The kicker is that the ...

100 Mile Bread made by uOttawa student Sarah Campbell Food that is now seen as “specialty” and that one has to go out of her way to find, such as local, organic fare produced by small scale farmers, was once the only food available. It’s true that in those days people had to put more effort into food preparation and had to think a bit harder about how to keep meals interesting with ingredients limited to what was grown in the region, however, even in situations of energy scarcity, trade conflicts, or war we were guaranteed a food supply. Now the average item in the supermarket comes from over 1500 kilometres away and needs large water, energy, pesticide, and fertilizer inputs to support the large-scale, industrial, commodity crop farms it comes from. In fact, most the diversity we find in the supermarket is simply a manipulation of commodity corn and soy in the form of many different cereals, sauces, crackers, and candies. Our industrialized and commoditized food system has led...

Imagine my surprise a couple of years ago when I strolled into the office and found out that our office does regular monitoring of the CO2 levels in classrooms. I wasn't surprised that we did it, I mean this only makes sense right? People exhale CO2 with every breath and if not monitored it can really accumulate. No I was surprised that we won an award for doing it. It turns out that not very many, if any, other institutions do this. I was flabbergasted to say the least. CO2 is natural occurring gas that has of course recently found notoriety because of Climate Change. Of course too much CO2 can have dramatic impacts on the Earth's capacity to retain heat, but it can also kill you if the concentrations are too high. I am being a tad melodramatic here; the concentrations needed to actually kill a human are ridiculously high. But that doesn't mean that the concentrations that are present in your typical indoor environment can't cause major discomfort. At 1% CO2 in the env...

*This post is from a guest contributor. Jonathan Holmes is a core member of Green Campus and an all around passionate student activist for the environment. Dear Friends, I like to think of myself as a reasonable person. I usually don’t take strong stances on political issues. I understand that no political question is cut and dry, and I attempt to learn about all of the points of view on different issues. And yet you might have recently seen me in facebook pictures and videos wearing a dress, dancing to a fiddle, or even dropping my pants. You might think I’ve gone crazy, and am throwing away my good reputation and public respectability. You’d probably be right. But believe me – I am only doing this because I am convinced that climate change is such an incredibly serious and immediate problem that we need action NOW. To quote the most recent research, “global emissions must PEAK THEN DECLINE RAPIDLY WITHIN THE NEXT FIVE TO TEN YEARS for the world to have a reasonable chance of avoiding...

Students at the University of Ottawa may have noticed four teenagers scurrying around their campus lately, hauling bags full of sawdust or balancing cans of compost, keeping tabs on the environmentally friendly recycling bins or replacing old recycling signs with updated ones. Who are these mysterious people and why are they darting every which way around the campus? Katimavik has brought together eleven youth from across Canada to live and work in the city of Ottawa. It is a six to nine month youth volunteer program that lets youth from across the country experience diverse work placements and cultural differences, as well as being able to dapple in their program of choice, ranging from eco-citizenship to improving their second language to civic engagement. Working for the uOttawa’s Sustainability Department, four Katimavik participants are helping to implement environmental plans and spread the word that the entire uOttawa campus needs to make a difference to, well, save the world. W...

A couple of months ago I blogged about something called Open Green Maps, or if I didn’t I meant to. I am not sure if you are familiar with the Open Map concept but it is really quite simple. Take your standard map of anything and Open Maps allows you to personalize the content on the map. So you can add a picture or a description of a location to a map. Now enter the Open ‘Green’ Map. The first time I ever heard about a Green Map was at a sustainable campuses conference in Vancouver. It turns out that some geography students of Royal Roads College had collected a bunch of coordinates for some of the green characteristics of their campus and then laid those coordinates over top of a campus map. And voila; instant Green Map. But things have gotten a lot easier since those days of collecting individual GPS points and feeding them into a GIS program. We can all thank Google Maps for that. Although Google didn’t invent the concept of an Open Green Map, they certainly have ...

This isn't really anything new but it is certainly exciting. The Office of Campus Sustainability participates every year in the Experiential Learning program. In the past we have worked with Eric Crighton' s first year environmental issues class. Each year these students help conduct recycling surveys on campus that ultimately end up being used to improve the campus recycling system. This year we have been working with Renate Sander-Regier, the prof for the third year natural resource management class. The concept is simple - the students of the course have to assess the natural resources of the campus and make recommendations about how to use them all sustainably. Please allow this brief interjection. I like the ELS program because it does 3 things. First, students get to do some real work and learn some practical skills, not that theoretical stuff that sometimes leaves you feeling empty sometimes. Two, a community group gets the benefit of some much needed work / info / hel...

As you may have seen from the picture above, I am trying something new this year, winter cycling. Now I am not a rampant winter cyclist; in point of fact I have never done it before. And there is a good chance that I won’t even make it a quarter of the way through this winter. But I want to try. I am not actually going to talk about winter cycling actually, i just thought it would be nice to share this picture. All day i was actually thinking about what i would call this picture. If I had to title the above picture I would call it “Nice try winter” or “Bikers 1, Winter 0”. But I digress, this post is about making easier to do something more environmentally friendly. I don’t think that you need much more of an example beyond the above picture. I am trying out winter cycling and what i need is clean roads and accessible bike racks. Otherwise, I won’t be able to keep this up much longer. In the of Sustainability world we talk about barriers. When we want people to change ...

Picture courteousy of www.bouge.c a Two years ago the University faced a stark reality... the students didn't think that the campus was sustainable. Actually, if you want to really get down to the nitty gritty, the students perceived that the Univerrsity had a low level of commitment to the environment. Every year the Globe and Mail releases a survey about universities in Canada. The survey is a perceptions based exercise which asks students to rate their campuses. Hundreds to thousands of students respond to these surveys and the G&M is able to regroup the info to grade various institutions. (Check out the special report on the environment section here ) So two years ago the University of Ottawa received a "D". Not so great. I mean it could be worse... not much worse... but it could have been. This was a wonderful opportunity actually. When universities get a bad rating, then things start to happen. The UofO responded with a massive push on recycling. My boss often t...