Photo credit: Jonathan Rausseo It’s been close to 4 months since I left home to embark on my six month national youth volunteer adventure. I had just graduated high school and wanted something to do. Traveling to three different parts of Canada with 10 other young people, totally appealed. With the program focus being Eco-Citizenship and Active Living, I couldn’t wait to get started. Having to create environmental contracts and having our work placements center around “green” organizations, I knew I’d be a changed woman. As a group, we made all sorts of decisions in hopes of making ourselves more environmentally savvy. We would buy local produce whenever possible, take shorter showers, start a vegetable garden and follow the “if it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown, flush it down” philosophy when using the bathroom. We recycle everything and about half of our fridge is filled with leftovers. Our house came fully equipped with enough bikes for everyone so there’s really no excuse fo...

Most people think that incorporating sustainability into everyday lives and massive government undertakings, like sporting events, is a development of recent years. When I say recent, let me make it clear that this means in the ballpark of 5 years. What they’d be surprised to find out is that they’re entirely wrong. The best example of a sustainable initiative that was largely unadvertised is the Sydney Olympic Park in Australia. Sydney hosted the Olympic Games in 2000, winning the bid well before the “green boom,” and everyone’s sudden interest in saving our planet. When they won the bid, most of their money went into remediating land that was swallowed by landfills, and turning it into beautiful, safe parks and recreational areas. Instead of using the Olympics as an excuse to excavate the life out of their city and build exquisitely complex buildings instead of keeping biodiversity, a large portion of the money they spent went into preserving ecosystems and restoring previously distu...

Photo credit: http://www.foundshit.com/water-fountain-squirrel/ If only water fountains were everywhere…then there’d be no need for bottles. In any case, this last week, I performed the Water Fountain Assessment. I used emphatic caps to reinforce the importance of this process. What the assessment entailed was the inspection of each and every single fountain on campus and taking down information about the water pressure, temperature, taste, general fountain appearance, accessibility and availability of goosenecks. After hydrating to an unnecessary extent, these numbers were all inputted to be analyzed and compared with last year’s assessments. I am pleased to announce that there has definitely been a lot of progress, most of it being as a result of the massive construction undertakings on campus. The fact of the matter is, there is still a lot of work to be done to upgrade the fountain infrastructure at uOttawa to a satisfactory level, especially now that we’ve banned the sales of bott...

Photo credit: wallflowerstudioseeds.blogspot.com/ Je ne vous apprends rien si je vous dits que l’état de notre planète est mal et qu’il est temps d’agir, et ce sur tous les plans. Il existe plusieurs petits gestes que l’on peut poser quotidiennement qui minimisent nos impacts négatifs sur l’écosystème fragile de la terre. Ces actions peuvent être aussi simples qu’avoir un sac réutilisable sur soi pour minimiser et pourquoi pas éliminer notre utilisation de sac en plastique; recycler tout ce qui se recycler et composter si vous avez un grand jardin ou si votre municipalité a mis en place un système de compostage. Il y a aussi l’étiquetage des produits qui indique leur empreinte carbone. Personnellement, je crois que c’est une bonne mesure pour diminuer nos impacts partout, mais spécialement pour nous, ci au Canada parce que nous vivons dans un pays septentrional. Laissez-moi vous expliquer pourquoi après cette courte définition. D’après le dictionnaire de l’environnement le terme « Empr...

After a full month of frustration and reward in equal measure, the Dump & Run draws to a close. The storage is full, roughly 100 boxes filled with various items have been donated to charities, and Leblanc is no longer my second home. Before closing the book on Dump & Run 2010 for good, though, I wanted to share some information about it with the general public. Everyone likes numbers, right? The total amount of stuff collected weighs 2.4 tonnes . 25% of all the material collected was women’s clothing. The majority of the miscellaneous kitchen items were toaster ovens and electric kettles. The total number of boxes filled: 278 And for interest’s sake, here is a quick breakdown of everything collected: All in all, this year’s campaign was incredibly successful and diverted massive amounts of useable and recyclable items from the landfill. Goodbye for now, Dump & Run, and we will see you next year! -vedrana

Photo credit: www.roycod.com Enfin, le retour de l’été! D’un côté, qui dit beau temps dit les longues lectures de notre roman préféré sur le gazon et les samedis après-midi passés sur les patios de nos pubs et café favoris. D’un autre côté, le retour du soleil est synonyme de la panique totale : mettre de la crème solaire en tout temps. Cette obsession de se couvrir la peau semble nous rassurer puisque les crèmes solaires attestent de bloquer les rayons ultraviolets qui sont, d’après Santé Canda, la cause principale du cancer de la peau. Il m’apparait que les compagnies de cosmétiques ont profité de notre manque de connaissance à ce sujet et de notre vulnérabilité à se protéger, pour créer chez nous une réelle phobie du soleil. De plus, bonne chance à la personne qui essaie de choisir la meilleure crème solaire qui se vend à la pharmacie. Il existe des dizaines de marques de crème solaire avec des facteurs de protection solaire (FPS) différents allant de 15 à 100. En addition, il y en ...

Though I tried to get my family to quit bottled water cold turkey, it didn’t exactly go over as well I had hoped. However, it wasn’t entirely in vain; we did reduce our household’s consumption substantially. I feel that this is going to be an ongoing battle, but one that I’m willing to fight. With that said, I figured it’d be an appropriate time to distract them from being unimpressed by their lack of “convenient” water by sneaking our compost bucket into the kitchen casually. While my mom and I were making dinner a few nights ago, I made a point of tossing all of the peels, egg shells and other compost created into the little bucket, hoping she’d get the idea. Alas, the European parent is a stubborn one. I talked to her about it afterward and we came to the conclusion that composting is only going to be happening if I’m doing it. Okay, I can deal with this. What this entails is literally flitting around my family during mealtimes and making sure everything compostable is heading into ...

Thanks to everyone that made environment week possible this year. A shout out to Brigitte, Danny, Marc, Vedrana, Amina, Matt, and Leah. We had a bunch of great activities this year but I did want to take a moment to especially mention the bike repair kiosk that Matt was running during this year's BBQ. Like every year, there are dozens of individuals that come by looking for some help getting their bikes back into working order. Well, worry no more friends, the Bike Coop will soon be finished. You can check some earlier posts about the Coop and all the cool services we hope to have but the essential is that campus community members will now have a space to fix up their bikes with the guidance of a technician. And the timing couldn't be better. At this year's bike repair kiosk there were many bikes that came our way that were just on the border of not being road worthy. In the picture below you can see a brake line that was maybe a couple of minutes away from complete failure...

Photo Credit: Pierre St-Jacques Comme une résidente depuis ma jeunesse de la région de la Capitale Nationale, il m’est difficile d’accepter les commentaires clichés sur Ottawa. J’en ai entendu de toutes les sortes. Il semble que toute personne à son mot à dire lorsqu’il s’agit de parler d’Ottawa-Gatineau. Je pense qu’il ne faut pas comparer Ottawa à de très grandes villes pour deux raisons. Premièrement, Ottawa n’est pas aussi une grande métropole, donc c’est une erreur de la comparer avec Montréal et Toronto. Deuxièment il serait anormalement stupide pour une ville de juste 90 mille habitants d’avoir autant d’activités que les grandes villes, car non seulement ca sera une perte d’argent, mais aussi par ce que le nombre des participants sera toujours minime. En fait, est-ce possible que les gens arrêtent de comparer et juste apprécier la ville telle qu’elle est? C’est ce qu’a fait Ève Dumas, chroniqueuse du journal La Presse, section voyage. L’article est bien présenté car il est divis...

Environment week is just around the corner, and last-minute preparations are underway in the Sustainable camp. Next week is looking to be a very exciting and enlightening experience for both staff and students! In a perfect world, every single week of the year would be Environment Week; unfortunately, this is not the case. What we are trying to do by planning out various activities over the week is raising awareness, one small step at a time. If you’re interested in getting involved in the festivities of next week, RSVP to our Facebook event ( http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=110972942281484 ), and show up to whatever suits your fancy. If you simply don’t have the time to participate, celebrate Environment Week your own way by biking or walking to work, starting to compost, reducing energy usage, etc. It doesn’t have to be an official week for us to pay attention to, and respect, our environment. Enjoy the glorious weather, and hope to see you out in a few days! - vedrana

Photo Credit: David Kawai, The Ottawa Citizen It's back!!! The GREAT GLEBE GARAGE SALE!!!! Okay I will be the first to admit that the items are overpriced; and the merchandise is sometimes questionable; and the road is long (with many a winding road); but come on, it's the GREAT GLEBE GARAGE SALE people! And although it is no Free Store, it has its redeeming qualities. For those of you that are not in the know this is the premiere garage sale of the City of Ottawa. Not because it is the best, or because it has the best stuff, but because it is simply the largest. Yes you heard it right, this is the largest garage sale in Ottawa and therefore I contend that it is one of the green events that puts Ottawa on the map. And yes this is a contentious issue so allow me to defend my position. 1) The Sale is a massive event that basically covers all of the Glebe. This is great except that it limits people who would like to be involved in the selling but don't live in the Glebe. You c...

This is the experience of myself, at a place I never thought I would work (or more like being volun-told). This is also my first real blog that I have done, so go easy on the criticism eh? I came late in the Katimavik Program and therefore did not get to experience life before the famous Dump-N-Run program that has brilliantly put in place by Jon and Brigitte; however I found the concept thoroughly intriguing. Getting people to donate (for them more like throw away) any old, used, or just unwanted things (whether it be clothes, books, bedding, bathroom accessories, dishes, electronic equipment, etc) instead of throwing it in the trash. So Eco friendly!! There has been MANY an hour sorting through clothes, washing and folding sheets and towels, doing dishes (ugh those nasty dishes!!) nonetheless I have quite enjoyed myself! (I know, odd eh? The act of enjoying this slavery has even mystified myself) I’ve met numerous wonderful people that I do wish to keep in contact with, and see again...

Photo credit: czechmatediary.com The weeks are flying by here, and somehow, the gigantic Dump&Run mountain of clothing, food, dishes and other miscellaneous items has nearly entirely been reduced to easy-to-donate boxes. There’s still some work to do yet, but we’re now heading out of the woods rather than trying to figure out how to dislodge ourselves from the brambles. This past week, I had the opportunity to mention where I work to a lot of people I know, and ended up fielding a lot of questions concerning the bottled water ban. For the most part, the response was incredibly positive; however, regardless of their responses, I found that very few of the individuals in question were adequately informed of the logic behind the ban, and the extent (in all fairness, we are still working on the latter). The students have to be informed, or, as is the custom in large groups of poorly-informed people, speculations and rumours will come to be accepted as the norm, leading to a whole host...

Hey again! Yet another week wraps up here in uOttawa’s Sustainable Development office, and man, has it ever been busy. This week, we were sorting and folding up a storm to try and get all of the diverted waste from the Dump and Run organized and ready to be donated. There’s still a lot to be done, but we are leaps and bounds farther down the line than we were on Monday. There are clothes that need folding, dishes that need washing and a whole bunch of miscellaneous items that need a purpose (once we figure out exactly what they are, mind you). Our hopes are that we’ll have everything done by the end of next week, at which point there will be photos and videos aplenty to share! It’s been a remarkable experience just seeing the sheer volume of items that we are diverting from landfills and knowing that deserving people will be getting some much-needed items to boot. At the same time, though, realizing that a lot of the stuff that’s being thrown out has never been used or worn is a bit d...

My name is Vedrana, and I’m one of the new students working for this wonderful office on campus. My first week has come to a close, and I figured I should just pop in to share my impressions of both working here and the University’s sustainable initiatives. I came into this position with only a basic knowledge of what was being done on campus, and was massively surprised to find out how little I knew! Over the course of five (well, six) days, I began to develop a much deeper understanding of what sustainability is and how I can play a part. Naturally, I bring this understanding and awareness back home to my family, in hopes of making my household more sustainable. My summer goal is to make a drastic change towards the better in my home; in addition to the initiatives I will be both spearheading and assisting with on campus itself. If all of us were to take the time to educate our families and introduce them to simple steps to reduce their carbon footprint, we’d all be better off. With...