Photo credit: Jonathan Rausseo So it turns out that I got a lot of questions from my last post about just how much water we use on campus. We I didn't mention the total amount because I figured everyone would know once the annual report was published. 611,044 cubic meters of water. That's how much we consume on campus every year. This averages out to 1.7 Million litres of water every day. A lot of people have a tough time visualizing this, hence the little picture up above. If you can imagine a cube of water that is 12 meters long, by 12 meters deep, by 12 meters high... that's how much water we use daily. The average person is just under 2 meters tall. The big culprits on campus for water consumption are basically exactly who you would expect. Research equipment - Aquatic tanks, chemistry experiments, and so forth really gobble up the water. But this is a tough category to calm when you consider that fact that the University's bread and butter is research. Luck...

Photo credit: Brigitte Morin Camping has got to be one of my favorite pass-times; I have been camping for years, and have had the opportunity to visit over 30 Canadian parks. I always had a problem with going out in nature and creating a bunch of waste; all the food items which are practical on a camping trip come along with disposable wrappers, or there weren’t any waste diverting options (other than burning in the campfire) on site. Hot dogs, dry foods, energy bars, even ice and log bags come with a plastic bag. Empty cans and beer bottles don’t smell nice after three days in the car; which is why most people throw out their recyclables in the park waste bins rather than bringing them home. At Mont Tremblant Park last week, I noticed that they were advertising recycling and a few other environmental initiatives on the plasma screen inside the welcome cabin. On the way to our site, I saw the huge recycling bins and noticed that they removed most of the waste bins at the cleaning ...

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...

Photo credit: Jonathan Rausseo Have you ever been involved in planning an event? Make that a large event and on campus. The amount of effort that goes into it is amazing, especially if the planners are trying to be “green”. Early this year, I attended the Sustainable Business Conference and although I was not around for the planning of the event, I was able to see the results of what I imagine to be many sleepless nights- all sacrificed in the name of being “green”. From the choice of food served at events to the selection of speakers, every decision made while planning an event has some sort of environmental consequence. It may be the decision to order from local caterers that are committed to local and organic produce or to hold teleconferences rather than have speakers travel far distances. Planning an event is stressful enough without contemplating the environmental consequences of every little decision, so I’m working on a “Green Guide” that will hopefully make this easier for pla...

Photo Credit: Jonathan Rausseo As Jon has already pointed out, we are on the final stretch of the STARS project. I know so much about STARS that it is slowly seeping out of my ears. In hopes of minimizing the seeping, I plug my earphones in, make myself a nice playlist on Grooveshark (Kat's STARS playlist) and plough through all the credits. And we are being quite efficient, if I may say so myself. En route, nous avons rencontré plusieurs pépins : personnes ressources en vacances, courriels et suivis oubliés/ignorés/brulés/disparus de façon suspecte, rendez-vous annulés, pages web contenant des infos datant de l’âge des hommes des cavernes. Malgré tout, nous nous sommes débrouillés à coups de téléphone, surtout. C’est solide, un téléphone! Mais aussi à l’aide de connaissances et de recherches ardues. The worst part was surprisingly not the slow if not absent feedback. It was often the fact that nobody seems to know what the heck STARS is. I understand, it’s an avant-garde thing f...

This list was taken from a 2006 article featured in the Guardian.UK Photo Credit: come on, this image is like everywhere 5. James Lovelock (1919-), Biologist Best known for his Gaia theory, which says the Earth's biosphere works as a single living organism, able to manipulate the climate and chemistry of the atmosphere and the oceans to keep them fit for life. The idea was hugely influential among fellow scientists and environmentalists, and religious and spiritual thinkers. An ex-Nasa scientist, his work on the Viking Mars missions sparked an interest in the way planets function. 4. David Attenborough (1926-), TV naturalist The voice of wildlife, conservation and all things that wriggle, fly and roam across planet Earth, Sir David is still going strong. His programs have brought the natural world into the living rooms of millions over 50 years and his contribution to public awareness of natural science brought him a fellowship of the Royal Society. 3. Jonathon Porritt (1950-), G...