Every year a dedicated group of workaholic students get together and do their part to make the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa a little greener and a little more equitable. I say workaholic because the hours that they put in this event could only be accomplished by fanatics. And yet every year, (and don't ask me how) these young students, these pillars of the campus, somehow find the time in their busy schedules to make the Annual Sustainable Business Conference happen. Three years ago, a couple of students took it upon themselves to create a conference at Telfer that would challenge the reckless impact that business can have on the environment. The organizers toyed with the idea of focusing on things like mining and big oil, you know... as a way of garnering some controversy and generating some deep reflection about where funding for the University comes from. The first conference was well attended and surprisingly insightful. I mean, it was put together by...

I am a Katimavik volunteer that has been placed in Ottawa to live with eleven other people in a house for 6 months. It is my second day of work and I am loving it. I got placed at the University of Ottawa in the sustainability unit with one other person from my household. Ottawa is definitely something to see, I am from a small town in Saskatchewan and not a whole lot goes on there. Today we went through the campus and placed paper towel recycling signs in the washrooms hoping that the students will take the time to look and agree that this is a good idea. If this catches on we can reuse the paper towel which adds up and would contribute to saving our planet. There is still so much to do, as I am slowly learning. Every Monday morning we have staff meetings where everyone touches on what they did during the week before. I am realizing there is so much that goes on in this work place and its neat finding out so much about what these fantastic people are doing. They are all over the place...

Photo Credit: CBC Radio Jon and Bridget sat my partner Shredder and I down at the meeting table, and my mind was blown. We came in halfway through the meeting with no sort of context or lead in, so for the first bit I had no idea what was going on, but then they started talking about uPass. Now I'm not very familiar with the going ons of Ottawa yet (I've only been here a few times previous to living here) but it doesn't take a genius to see that Ottawa has a pretty damn intense bus system. Coming from a lifestyle where I owned a car and I lived in Calgary - a place where most non-drivers get around via subway - I was kinda daunted when I realised the only transit left available to me was the bus (or walking). And frankly, I gotta say that it doesn't make much sense that a city of 812 000 people (which is probably almost double that in tourists), isn't outfitted with a train system, as it'd be faster, more efficient, and the city's infrastructure is basical...

Dans l’esprit de RecycloManie, et aussi pour agir d’exemple; je vais m’engager à vivre sans déchets pendant deux mois. Ce que j’entends par cela est que je vais acheter seulement des produits qui viennent dans des contenants réutilisables et recyclables; ex. un contenant de yogourt qui est réutilisable, avec une pellicule en métal recyclable serait un article acceptable vs. un contenant qui a une pellicule en plastique non recyclable. Ce sera un défi pour moi de vivre sans déchets pour deux mois; je suis actuellement en train d’évaluer tous les produits que j’utilise et lesquels produisent un déchet quelconque. J’ai trouvé une excellente recette pour des tablettes granola au chocolat et noix de coco au lieu d’acheter des tablettes enveloppés individuellement; j’ai aussi trouvé deux magasins à Gatineau qui me laisseraient emporter mon propre contenant pour acheter du fromage de toute sorte (La Trappe à Fromage); et des articles en vrac bio (Gagné en Santé). À Ottawa, il y a la boutique ...

Photo Credit: http://ufsustainability.blogspot.com Today was arguably one of the coldest days that most of us have ever experienced. The downside (putting aside the fact that I couldn't feel my fingers, legs, toes, and all other parts of my body while biking to work today) is that the University has been curtailed! What does that mean? Well don't feel bad if you don't know... I mean seriously, there is no reason why you should know. What it means is that the University has to burn oil instead of natural gas. Yes, dirty, ugly, oil. Unfortunately this is a fact of life because of the weather. Once temperatures get this cold the University has to stop burning natural gas so that there is enough natural gas for residential houses. Oh well. This got me thinking though. I wanted to know how much CO2 was being generated by this oil that we had to burn. I never actually found out. But it did find out something else. It turns out that the University of Ottawa has achieved its Kyoto ...

Source: Museum of Nature So, my time working in this office is drawing to a close, and I feel that a parting message is in order. That’s not to say that I won’t ever blog again, but it won’t really be a regular occurrence, and I won’t be buzzing around this office spreading my crazy anymore. By spreading my crazy, I mean being “productive” or something to that effect. I began my journey here last April, with only a basic idea of what exactly it is that I was to be doing. My idea of sustainability was pretty loose, at best, and my life definitely had a lot of room for improvement in that department. I found the growth of knowledge to be exponential; both with respect to the campus as a community and in the greater scope of the world. I began using a reusable water bottle and convinced my entire family to follow suit; we have now eliminated a substantial expenditure AND eliminated roughly 850 plastic water bottles from passing through our house yearly. I have increased my knowledge of r...

Photo credit: http://d-studio.sauder.ubc.ca/ On m’a récemment demandée : «Quel genre d’activiste environnementale es-tu? » Cette question m’a prise par surprise car jamais encore je ne m’étais considérée comme tel. Je suis plutôt du genre à croire que les changements de société se font en douce, un individu à la fois. Et c’est avec un esprit et un cœur ouvert que je participe au «tournant vert». Pour moi, l’intégration de la dimension durable dans nos modes de vie est une fin en soi; elle n’a pas besoin de justification allant au-delà de ses prémisses de base. Pourquoi le développement durable? Parce que les ressources à la base de notre vie ne sont pas infinies, parce que nous sommes beaucoup trop connaissante comme société pour dénier le lien intrinsèque qui nous lie à la Terre et parce qu’il est moralement impossible pour moi de ne pas considérer l’impact que mes actes ont sur l’immédiat et le futur. Si de nos jours, vouloir travailler pour une organisation partageant cette façon de...

Photo credit: Jonathan Rausseo You are probably going to hear a lot about this over the next couple of weeks. Now I am not sure if you remember this from previous years but when it comes to RecycleMania, we a re kind of a big deal. Here's the skinny, RecycleMania is an international recycling competition between universities and colleges. Everyone submits their recycling numbers over the 10 week challenge (from January to March) and the organizers rank all the participants. In the past 2 years, uOttawa has emerged as the undisputed Canadian champions. Internationally we placed 14th (out of ~300) last year and we are looking to three-peat. The reason that RecycleMania is so important to us is simple, we want to get to zero waste. Take a look at the graphic above. Since 1987 the University has actually reduced its waste production by over 60%. In 2009, the amount of recyclables produced and the amount of waste generated were the same (a 50% diversion rate). In the past few years the ...

Photo Credit: storyofstuff.com RecycleMania approacheth! Placing as Canada’s top university last year, with a total recycling rate of 52.78%, University of Ottawa is preparing for another successful year. The competition begins on January 15th and ends on March 27th, the first two weeks being “trial” weeks. Keep an eye out for events running around campus and get involved! Challenge a friend, roommate or even a residence floor in a waste-reduction and recycling contest. Take the winner(s) out for a beer (just make sure the bottle is recycled). RecycleMania provides competition as a motivation to reduce waste and increase recycling efforts across campus and hopefully into student’s homes. It may be emphasized especially for this one part of the year but the habits should be practiced beyond the competition. Conspicuous consumption is an obvious problem during the holiday season; malls are filled with people who cannot wait to spend money and buy gifts. And now that the joyous season is ...

Photo Credit: gmvolt.com I’ve read several articles over the past little while that are hailing 2011 as the Year of the Electric Car (this one, in particular: chevy volt ). I find that a pretty bold statement to make, seeing as how most experts have been emphasizing how much more work needs to be done to make our society decrease our gas dependence. I guess your opinion is heavily dependent on who you work for, too. Personally, though I think that we possess the technology and ability to make this year a breakthrough, we are still much too dependent on gas and our current comfortable way of life to make such a drastic change. Yes, electric vehicles aren’t exactly new, per se, but given the current circumstances, the surge predicted to occur in 2011 doesn’t really convince me. A primary issue in making this happen, as the case is in quite a few situations, is awareness. A large majority of people will be satisfied with receiving second-hand, filtered information & rumours, rather t...

Photo credit: Jonathan Rausseo So coming off one of the best year's that we have ever had at the Office of Campus Sustainability we decided that we want to do better. But how can you do better if you don't know what the people want. That's where this post comes in. Last year was the first year that we serious dove into the social media realm (check out our Facebook infographic above detailing the success of our fan page). We decided that we needed to meet the community on their terms. Our social media sites ( Twitter , Facebook , Flickr , and Green Maps ) allow us to keep in contact with the community while creating an online scrapbook of our activities and initiatives. But we can do more. The tools can be used to create a dialogue with the community. Not just us pumping the information in one direction, but also allowing the community to tell us what they think and how they feel about the things that we are doing. I'll give you an example, if we launch a new recycling ...

Photo credit: Merissa Mueller Hello! The first week of 2011 has come to a close and I have come to the conclusion that this year is going to be a great year for environmental sustainability on campus. The Office of Sustainability is working hard toward new projects and improving old ones that will continue the process of greening our campus. If you would like to see some of the progress they have made the past year, check out the annual report from 2010. This report provides tonnes of information about campus sustainability initiatives and has personally made me proud to be a University of Ottawa student. As a student you are always told to get involved, and when it comes to saving your planet, this is also true. Whether it is your own personal green goals or joining a campus group, there are many ways to help reduce waste, energy and water usage in your community. I have made my own goals this year, and I am now a member of the Office of Sustainability, which will allow me to pla...

Photo Credit: Jonathan Rausseo A couple of months ago I blogged about the surveys that were being conducted in Eric Crighton's Environmental Studies course ( Love and Surveys ). For those of you that didn't read it here is the Cole Note's summary... students conducted over 2,000 surveys about environmental issues on campus. This was part of the Experiential Learning Program. As the results begin to role in I thought that I might take the time to tell you about the recommendations that were made. Each student was asked to only do the surveys, but also include a series of recommendations about how to improve the campus based on their surveys. The results are in... Most people recommended that we needed more bins (228). Another 107 recommendations were made to produce more information. 63 people wanted more online content, etcetera. All the big recommendations have been highlighted in the nifty chart up above. They cover everything from recycling to green space to paper consu...

Photo credit: Jonathan Rausseo *Click on image for a larger view I know we are now in 2011 but I did want to take a quick look back to 2010. It turns out 2010 was in fact a great year for sustainability on campus (see the last post: Once Upon a Time...), but there will always be more challenges to face. I was walking through the office today and I overheard some of the office students talking about space on campus. Okay... maybe I was eavesdropping but that's besides the point. We got into a little conversation about the campus space crunch. On one side having a compact campus is good because it helps us use our space more efficiently. On the side, a crowded campus means that there always seems to be a lack of space to so things. As the campus population grows this problem is going to get worse before it gets better. The University can only build a certain number of new spaces at a time. And with the increase in space comes an increase in resource consumption (more energy, more wa...

Photo credit: Jonathan Rausseo I know we are now in 2011 but I did want to take a quick look back to 2010. It turns out 2010 was in fact a great year for sustainability on campus (see the last post: Once Upon a Time...), but there will always be more challenges to face. I was walking through the office today and I overheard some of the office students talking about space on campus. Okay... maybe I was eavesdropping but that's besides the point. We got into a little conversation about the campus space crunch. On one side having a compact campus is good because it helps us use our space more efficiently. On the side, a crowded campus means that there always seems to be a lack of space to so things. As the campus population grows this problem is going to get worse before it gets better. The University can only build a certain number of new spaces at a time. And with the increase in space comes an increase in resource consumption (more energy, more water, more garbage). In 2010 we rea...