It’s the time of year when the weather is warming up, everything is fresh and new and everyone’s favorite activity comes to mind… Spring cleaning! Here are some quick tips on easy ways you can get rid of clutter, clean up and organize without creating waste. Purge Unused Items  Someone wise once said, “If you haven’t used it in 6 months, you don’t need it.” Maybe it was Oprah. Maybe not. Since we live in an extremely seasonal climate, I stretch this for a year. For me this is mostly a wardrobe purge but look in your closets and under your bed. Are you REALLY going to use that tennis racket that has been lying around for 2 years? Collect all your good but unloved stuff and bring them to the Dump and Run ! You may not be using the seashell adorned photo frame your aunt gave you for graduation but someone out there might just fall in love with it. Don’t forget to look through your cupboards and pantry. Lots of dry goods can keep for extended periods of time but often, if...

I too used to be an optimistic about technology and science. I thought every time there was a problem either technology was going to fix it or science somewhere, we're over 7 billion on the planet, someone is bound to figure it out. - But now, not so much!It seems that there is good progress and bad progress and sometimes it is difficult to differentiate both of them. Here is an example of what I mean: We might have found a way to provide ourselves with basic foods such as vegetables and fruits all year round but it beats the purpose of their consumption: they are loosing their nutritional values (vitamins) because of chemicals used to grow them faster and bigger and the way we harvest them. Moreover, we keep investing in events like " bike for cancer" and "walk for cancer" and so on to get funds to develop more technology and science to find a cure for cancer. Maybe were going in the wrong direction. Maybe it's time to go back to our old habits. Ins...

I love cycling to work every day. It clears my mind, wakes my body and gives me enough time to go from grumpy and groggy to awake and chirpy. I try to be respectful of everyone else (cyclists, cars and pedestrians), as well as respect the basic rule that a bike is like a car when on the street. So I stop at red lights, signal when I’m about to turn or change lanes and always look around. You can imagine my dismay when I got honked at this morning by a man in a dark blue honda merging into my lane is I was going straight on Allumetières (downhill too). I guess I was slowing him down in his merging because he started to honk at me, and had I been lost in my thoughts, I probably would have toppled off my bike (into a mucky puddle). Let’s say it wasn’t a little gentle “beep”. It was more like “BEEEP”. I tried to tell him to wait a minute and to let me change lanes, but he prefered to honk again. I eventually managed to change lanes before he ran me over. The lesson from this? If I...

We just finished up D-Day (a.k.a Dump Day, a.k.a Dump and Run Day) and I really wanted to get this off my chest while it is still fresh on my mind. To all our staff members and volunteers... thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Over the past two days I have personally witnessed sacrifice, dedication, and determination. As a group we have been running around collecting waste from dumpsters, collection tables, private residences, and other nooks / crannies. At times this has been a true test of one's mettle. There have been smells that could wake the Dead. There have been taunts and disapproving stares from community members. There have been cuts; there have been bruises; there have been cramps; and there have been tears. In addressing the group today I said that I was touched. The blood, tears, and sweat shed by this group have not been in vain. We will clean the items collected and we will find them new homes. We will go to shelters and we will go to clinics and we will ...

The Dump & Run is simultaneously one of the most rewarding and disappointing activities that we have on campus. The event centers around campus move out, during which thousands of students flee the campus to have happy and productive summers back home. The problem is that during their time on campus, these students tend to over consume and then find themselves in the precarious position of having to get rid of their excess stuff in a small window of time. Our office therefore organizes the Dump & Run every spring to try to collect as much of this stuff before it is tossed into the garbage. So on the one hand the whole thing is very rewarding. We get to collect thousands of items (totally almost four tonnes last year) and then donate them to about a dozen charities around Ottawa. We get the satisfaction of knowing that we have diverted waste and helped out those in need. On the other hand though, I estimate that we are only able to capture about 20% of all the w...

The community gardens are back... and just in time cause this snow is killing me. Sunday the community garden group got together for a garden work bee. Thanks to a compost delivery last Friday, there was plenty of work to do. A good part of the day was spent cleaning out old plots, trenching the existing plots, adding some compost, and finally.... gratuitous hi-fives. This marks the 8th consecutive year of community gardening on campus at the University of Ottawa with approximately 50 plots available to staff, students, and community members. Not bad considering the garden originally started out as a small group of 10 students sharing 4 plots. This year, like that last few years, the resources for the garden were provided by Physical Resources Service and the community organizing was provided by OPIRG . And like last year, the plots are open on a first come first serve basis and are free to all those who participate. I am really happy to see the gardens up and running thi...

I get a lot of people asking about both Earth Day and Earth Hour. There is a consensus.... Earth Day is better than Earth Hour. The problem is I just don't believe it. Earth Day is a great day. It was started in 1970 and was famously chosen to be on April 22nd, which was incidentally the birthday of the lead ad agency guy. It was immense and did lead to some very important environmental reforms in the United States and subsequently Canada. It is widely celebrated but recently it has not reached the popularity it enjoyed in the early 70's. Earth Hour is a one hour celebration that asks people from around the world to turn off their lights for one hour as a symbolic gesture demonstrating that we can all play a role in helping the Earth. The problem with Earth Hour is that the event is so small that people tend to diminish the importance of the event. "Oh yeah.... one hour eh? How the hell is that going to help the planet?" So which one is better? Neither, they ...

Congratulations uOttawa; we are RecycleMania Canadian champions for the fourth year in a row! We achieved a 50% waste diversion rate average, and we produced only 14.17 lbs. per person of waste during the 8 weeks of the competition. Overall, with 605 participating Canadian and American institutions we placed 27th; which is pretty amazing considering that most of the institutions that did better than us had under 10,000 students – some even under 1,000. I would like to thank all of you who helped us achieve this by learning to recycle better, bringing their reusable coffee mugs, creating less waste, building waste awareness displays on campus, and especially those of you pledged to live waste-free during RecycleMania; it has a huge impact on the people around you - one of our campus departments was inspired by your stories and decided to do it for a whole week. You are also responsible for inspiring us to create the objective of becoming a zero waste uOttawa by the year 2020; wh...

It’s that time of year again, the time we all dread as students, where our days are filled with the sounds of turning pages, scribbling notes, slurping coffee, and punctuated by breaks for mowing down food. If you are anything like I was in first year while living in rez, you haven’t even started thinking about packing to go home because you have been so stressed with exams. If so, great! This means that when you are last-minute throwing your stuff together that hopefully you will have read this and rather than tossing unloved possessions into a big black garbage bag that instead you will put them aside for the Dump n’ Run. The things you leave behind could include clothes, electronics, kitchenware, office stuff, books, non-perishable food, or anything that is not too large (no big pieces of furniture, Jon’s back is bad as it is) that we will be able to donate to local charities. Last year we managed to pick up 3.18 tonnes of stuff and we hope to surpass that this year in terms of...

Spring has sprung, and with it has come a flurry of bikes hitting the streets for the first time since the icy pavement drove them into winter hibernation. It also comes with numerous cars less than eager to have to share the road again, and maybe slightly out of practice with road etiquette. So, I come to you, in honour of new and seasoned cyclists alike, who find this unseasonably warm weather to be really greasing their chains, but are fearful of being derailed by aggressive motorists on the roads, to remind everyone of a few basic tips to keep cyclists safe on the road. Always signal . Make sure that you signal and brake properly and far enough in advance to respect the needs of cyclists on the road. Be patient. Cyclists are slower to start at intersections than cars, this does not make it okay to veer around them, instead just wait a moment. Remember good things come to those who wait. Look both ways before you open your doors . Car doors are a cyclist’s enemy. Opening yo...

Au mois de février et mars 2011, nous avons fait une étude dans la cafétéria à l’UCU. Il y avait 7 stations de recyclage, avec des petites affiches, et des trous semblables.  Nous avons trouvé que : En moyenne, 85 bouteilles sont jetés ou recyclé par heure*; En moyenne, 28 contenants compostable sont jetés dans la poubelle par heure; 67 % des gens ne trient pas leurs articles correctement dans la cafétéria; 84 % des articles emporté aux comptoirs par les employés sont mal-triés *tous ces articles étaient jetés à la fin de la journée, donc, même si le tri était bien fait, 85 bouteilles se faisaient jetés par heure. Cette étude a justifié l’achat d’une station de tri pour tous les types de recyclage, la vaisselle, les cabarets, etc. avec des grandes d’affiches simples et de la couleur. Suite à l’installation de la nouvelle station de recyclage dans la cafétéria à l’UCU.  Au mois de mars 2012, nous avons refaite l’étude sur la contamination. Nous avons trouvé que :...

Bonjour M. Ravignat, Je vous écris aujourd’hui pour vous exprimer ma déception concernant l’annulation des fonds fédéraux pour le programme Katimavik, ainsi que les autres coupures aux programmes environnementaux. Aujourd’hui, je suis encore une fois embarrassée d’être Canadienne. Je travaille au bureau du développement durable à l’Université d’Ottawa et nous avons toujours accueilli des participants du programme Katimavik; plus de 30 jeunes ont passé dans notre bureau depuis 2007. Comme vous le savez, les programmes écologiques sont presque toujours les derniers items sur la liste de fonds, et la première chose que l’on coupe lorsqu’il manque un peu d’argent (Table ronde nationale sur l’environnement et l’économie, le Protocol Kyoto…). Nous avons dû travailler extrêmement fort pour accomplir tous les projets, les nouvelles politiques, etc. écologiques à l’Université d’Ottawa. C’est très clair que nous ne pourrions jamais être l’a où nous sommes sans l’aide précieuse des parti...

I messed up once during the week I pledged to go waste free. I tossed my dental floss in the garbage can and it wasn’t until I was walking around campus with a container of orange peels to compost that I realized I hadn’t even thought if that floss was recyclable. After a quick investigation online I found out that floss is not recyclable, which makes sense since mine seems like minty-scented nylon. Turns out, lots of big-name floss actually contains polytetrafluoroethylene, the same stuff that coats non-stick cookware, and its production is pretty bad for the environment. Who knew? A friend of mine suggested using hair, but I really don’t think I’m up for that just yet. The internet did, however, abound with suggestions on what to do with my used dental floss. People wash it (the best method apparently is to soak it in a container with soap), and then they reuse it. Either as reusable dental floss or to wrap packages, to tie plants in their garden, slice delicate food, sew buttons...

WTF!?!?! I just finished reading the article "Katimavik Cuts..." from the Huffington Post ( click here to read ). I don't normally take many political stances but this is just too extraordinary to not talk about. The next federal budget could dictate the existence of the Katimavik program! If you know anything about our office you will know that Katimavik volunteers are the backbone of our operations. They literally make this place work. Without them.... actually I don't even want to think about that right now. Every time a new group of Katimavik volunteers start working for us, I give them the same speech. I tell them that "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" (thank you mister Thomas Edison). I tell them that anyone can have a good idea but making good ideas happen is what makes Katimavik so special. And "persperate" they do. Our participants are crucial to several of our programs. This past year we had Katimavik manage our Dum...

(water fountain at the University of Ottawa) So last week was World Water Day and I have to ask a question, what did you do to celebrate? I know what you are thinking, "World Water Day... Are you serious?" You know, on a level I definitely feel you. Sure, water is super important, but come on... why not start celebrating air, or sunlight, or language? We are pretty spoiled here in Canada when it comes to a lot of things and I think that water is at the top of that list. We so take it for granted that it is basically forgotten that people used to have to take staggered showers not even a century ago. We hear about things like drought in the Prairies, but it is an alien concept to most of us. If you want to flush a toilet, you don't even think twice. If you need water to drink, you go to a tap or buy it at a store. The idea that there was simply no more water does not compute in our minds. The one beautiful thing about water is that we still recognize that it is v...