Photo credit: treehugger.com Last week I tweeted about the Sleep Box , which is, as the name says it, a big box you can rent and sleep/read/relax in for a few hours when waiting for your flight in an airport. If you’d like to try one out, feel free to fly out to Moscow to camp out in a giant wooden box. Now imagine having one of these babies on campus. Wouldn’t that be the best thing ever? Personally, I live in Hull and bike 30-45 minutes to get to class every day, and then bus for about an hour in the winter (when there is no traffic). So I get here early and stay until the sun goes down. There’s no quick trip home for me! I go to class, practise 5 hours and work. Technically, I don’t really have a lunch hour or a comfy place to crash nearby, which can make napping a little be awkward, especially with the cold weather – I used to doze near the canal during the summer. I have considered stuffing a hammock into my bike bag and hanging up in random places…as in my practise cubicle in the...

Photo credit: Jonathan Rausseo I feel fall in the air and can hear the tell-tale sounds of crunching leaves underfoot on my way to class which reminds me that a great initiative on campus is coming to a close as the Community Garden wraps up another successful year. Although faced with a strange cucumber beetle, tomato blight and scorching heat this summer, the garden has managed to bring joy to its participants who used it as a means of relaxing and producing their own organic and local produce. The Ontario Public Interest Research Group ( OPIRG ) driven project took place on King Edward Avenue across from Brooks Residence and included over twenty five participants that had access to free plots and necessary tools. It was great to escape from work on occasion to help water some of the plots- most notably when a water fight ensued with Marie-Pier during the 40+ degree weather. I hope to be involved next year and make some improvements to make the garden even more enjoyable for members...

Photo credit: Jonathan Rausseo This year is shaping up to be another incredible year for the Free Store. This initiative, originally started by the student members of Green Campus, has grown into a campus phenomenon. The premise of the program is simple; donations are collected and offered freely to the campus community. In 2006, the Free Store was just a small event where students would bring items they wanted to swap with one another. The whole thing was basically done on two tables and lasted like 2 hours. People liked the event but not too many people participated. The following year the Free Store got a boost from the Dump & Run . Items collected from the residences after students moved out were added to the tables of the Free Store. The event also started to give away more items than just clothing; morphing the format into a full day event. Three years ago, the International Office partnered with the Office of Campus Sustainability to create a special Free Store event exclu...

I got a phone call from housing services yesterday at lunch; they had a HUGE clean-up to do, and there were going to be things which we could give at the first Free Store. When I got there, it was like a second Dump and Run: a classroom was filled with all sorts of stuff left behind by students living in the Brooks apartment residences; jackets, pots and pans (you know some 50$ pans, and some 100$ sweaters…), electronics, books, jeans, canned food, etc. (STUDENTS: WHAT ARE YOU DOING THROWING ALL THIS STUFF OUT?! STOP BUYING!) To put you into perspective, during move-in/move-out weekends, residences cleaning staff are not given permission to sort recyclables and reusable items, and we are usually stuck trying to drag all these items out of the huge 20-yard waste bins outside residences (and they are usually covered in beer, and other things I would rather not know!). But this week end, while cleaning out the residences, Housing Services staff collected all the items left behind which we...

Photo credit: 4.bp.blogspot.com Avec le tout premier matin frais de l’été, arrive ma saison préférée de l’année… Le temps des pommes! (Bien sûr suit l’automne, la plus majestueuse et confortable de toutes les saisons) Voici 5 délicieuses recettes de pommes telles que suggérées par Terre Nouricière Ontario . Voyez quels aliments sont en saison à l’année longue. With the first crisp morning comes my very favorite time of the year… Apple season! (followed by fall, the most beautiful and comfortable time of the year. Yay.) Here are the 5 most delicious recipes containing apples found on Foodland Ontario. See their site for what is in season all year round. 5 S oupe au cheddar et aux pommes Nippy Apple Cheddar Soup 4 Pommes au Brandy en pâte Brandied Apples in Pastry 3 Roulé de poitrine de dindon farcie aux pommes Rolled Apple-Stuffed Turkey Breasts 2 Poulet à la marocaine avec pommes Moroccan Chicken with Apples 1 Tarte aux pommes traditionnelle de l’Ontario Traditional Ontario...

Photo credit: Jonathan Rausseo It is official and the results favour the idea that we could one day have a completely waste free campus. A couple of months back I blogged about the fact that we were building a new Sports Field and that a component of that sports field was going to be composed of recycled shoes. Well the rest of the project has now come to an end and the results for the total diversion of waste are now available. First, there is the total waste diversion from the old field. Since the field is composed of artificial turf, we had to find a way to recycle it. There were 2 components - the turf itself, and the infill (the little rubber pellets that are used to give the field a bouncy feel (and absorb the shock of impact). The old turf was turned into PVC pellets so it can be used to make more PVC products. The infill was collected and is being used to reinforce berms in high traffic areas. Total diversion for the old field is over 90%. Second, the waste for the re...

Photo credit: unknown I realize as September begins and students move into residence and new apartments that this saying is forgotten. The feelings of new beginnings overwhelm us and we decide to rid ourselves of last year’s Ikea furniture (because hey, we are getting the largest store in North America!) and make room for the new. I spent a chunk of this morning pulling “junk” from a dumpster in front of Brooks residence complex with the reward of saving numerous cardboard boxes from the trash along with two mirrors, a shelving unit and a few other assorted goods. My first question/cry of outrage was, “Who in their right mind throws out a perfectly intact full-length mirror?” The response I received from Jon and Brigitte was that students that are moving just don’t know what to do with these things. I already knew this, after seeing the tonnes of material we saved from being tossed (and instead donated to local charities) but, still! I look around my room with a sense of pride- ...

Photo credit: dreamstime.com 1. Avant d'acheter de nouveaux livres, allez-voir les petites annonces pour des livres usagés. Rappelez-vous également d'annoncer vos propres livres usagés des semestres précédents. Ils pourraient être utiles à d'autres étudiants. 2. Même si les ventes chez IKEA sont alléchantes, avant d'acheter vos nouveau meubles, allez voir ce que vous pouvez trouver sur Kijiji , usedottawa , freecycleottawa, à la Gratuiterie de l'uOttawa, aux magasins de l' Armée du salut , chez Value Village, chez vos parents et même en bordure des maisons avant la collecte des ordures! 3. Assistez à la première classe de chacun de vos cours AVANT d'acheter vos fournitures scolaires. De cette façon vous saurez quels sont vos réels BESOINS. 4. Attendez un peu avant d'acheter une nouvelle garde-robe. Il y aura des ventes avant la fin du mois de toute façon et ils se cachent toutes sortes de merveilles dans les magasins de seconde main ...

Photo credit: Jonathan Rausseo Remember that old saying? Also known as karma (or as I’d say in French “Faire sa b.a.” – bonne action). In this case, our food waste is what goes around and comes around. For example, you plant a few tomatoes on your balcony garden, pick it on a sunny afternoon, prepare it and then eat it. Now I could go into a lengthy (and gross) description of how it will end up in the sewer and be devoured by rats the size of Godzilla. Buuut, we’ll stick to the few bits and pieces going into the compost bin. Now, let’s say you don’t compost in your back yard (or simply don’t have one), but do in your apartment building, at school or at work. The University of Ottawa is lucky to have devoted Eco Champions who encourage their colleagues to compost/recycle/bike/be happy/spontaneously dance. Often more than not, employees will take turns emptying the pretty little bins into the Big Kahuna of a compost bin in a smallish and smelly cupboard. In our building, we usuall...

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...