I recently moved into a new condo, a very easy decision for me to make as an environmentalist. Condos use less resources per capita than houses do and my condo is seeking a LEED Silver certification. There was only one sticking point... I wanted access to a backyard, which is tough for a condo. But I was lucky and bought a place with a big enough balcony that there are planters. So there I am, got my condo, got my sort of backyard, all I needed was some patio furniture. Here is where things get complicated, basically because of my brother. His advice was simple "What are you stupid? Don't buy your furniture now... wait until the end of the season and get a high quality patio set for a quarter of the price." And since I am broke now, this kind of made sense to me. But what do I do for the rest of the summer, sit on milk crates? Luckily Brigitte came to my rescue and shared a couple of sites with me about pallet furniture. This site is a pretty good representation o...

As I drive along a road to my grand-father’s house on the week-end, I can’t help but notice the monster smokestacks that spoil Sudbury’s landscape. They can be spotted from miles away; towering over the (unusually) short vegetation and blackened granite. You can actually see a line where the exposed rocks have been blackened, and the recently broken or weathered rocks are pink and light grey (their natural color). Then it happened; a terribly geeky science moment! I remembered reading about acid rain problems in Sudbury being the cause for the lack of lush forest and bountiful wildlife; all because of the mega-smokestacks: Acid rain is produced when pollutants such as sulfur dioxide (SO2) are chemically transformed to sulphuric acid in the atmosphere; they are then transported and eventually deposited in the form of rain or snow. Over 90% of acid rain in North America is the result of burning fossil fuels for energy (such as coal), and more importantly smelting or refining sulphur...

The Burger family (Chris and Cindy) of Whitney Point, NY, produce less than a bag of garbage together in a year (about 12 ounces of garbage per person per year). To put things in perspective, on the uOttawa campus, employees and students (grad + undergrad + international + employees = 45289*) create 2 385 402 pound of waste a year, which means on average the uOttawa population produces 52.7 pounds of waste every year and most students are only on campus eight months of the year. That said, the University of Ottawa operates over 18 waste diversion programs. For example, there is traditional paper recycling (about 28% of all recycling), metal and commercial glass products, and more recent ones like the all plastics recycling, YES ALL OF THEM . In recent years, uOttawa also entered the Recyclemania  challenge, initiated the Dump & Run program, as well as the furniture recycling program, which  has avoided costs of close to $500,000**. This is part of why the University ...

Chapter 13- Dump and Run It was a dark, rainy day when the students were given the ultimatum- have your belongings gathered by noon or leave them for the trash yard. The hurried first-years rushed through their residence rooms, collecting their beloved possessions and ditching their less important things. Between threats from parents, annoyed siblings and under watch by residence employees, they only half-scrapped together their lives and left the rest behind as they departed for summer vacation. Clothes that were deemed unfashionable, unfitting, or simply forgotten clung to rez corners and were plucked up and thrown into the trash. Some students made the attempt to give them better homes and placed them with care into the Dump and Run locations. Others just took the lot of stuff they did not want and threw it in black bags and tossed them into the dumpster to die. The dumpster is a dingy and dank place. The black bags and random items comprise the space; and sharp objects pok...

Once a year, the University of Ottawa organizes an event where they recycle, recuperate and reuse students', employees' and the community’s unused clothes, electronics, dishes, food (canned) and other reusable things. This amazing program is called the  Dump and Run . That said, the Office of Campus Sustainability’s goal, among many others, is to promote recycling, community engagement, and most of all waste diversion on campus. Over the years, the event has grown and is becoming a part of the uOttawa experience, partly due to the increase in popularity of the event and partly because of the increase in community and students’ involvement. Now, you are probably wondering why I named this blog "The End of Poverty" since I have not yet discussed poverty. Among the goals mentioned previously, the University of Ottawa wishes to contribute (in their small way) to the end of poverty in the city of Ottawa by promoting this event and leading by example. To fight p...

Une fois par année, lorsque les étudiants quittent les résidences sur le campus, l’Université d’Ottawa organise un événement de récupération de nourriture non-périssable, vêtements, vaisselle et autres articles ménagers. Ce merveilleux événement s’appelle le «Déposez et dégagez». Un parmi plusieurs buts du Bureau du développement durable de l’Université d’Ottawa est de promouvoir l’entraide dans la communauté et surtout la réduction de déchets produits sur le campus. Au fil des ans, le programme connait de plus en plus de succès forcément dû à la hausse de popularité du programme, la hausse de l’implication de la communauté ainsi que le bon travail du département de communication et l’équipe au Bureau du développement durable. Maintenant, vous vous demandez surement pourquoi j’ai intitulé « La fin de la pauvreté» comme titre à un blog qui ne discute que du développement durable. Or, le but du Déposez et dégager, autre que ceux mentionné précédemment est de soutenir notre communa...

I recently joined up for the Bike to Work challenge being hosted by the City of Ottawa. The point is to create a goal about how much you would like to bike to work during the month of May, post your goal on their website, and then work towards that goal. Everything was going really well, I signed up on the site, set my goal.... and then I realized a day later that I have moved and don't bike as much as I used to, In fact, I don't actually need to bike at all to get to work. So now I am stuck in the precarious postilion of in no way being able to meet my cycling goal. This has played heavily on my mind and it got me thinking... what is better for the environment, walking or biking. At first glance you would think walking has biking beat hands down on this one; but maybe not. Resources First consider the amount of stuff that goes into making a bike (frame, pedals, seat, etc.) and maintaining. This number isn't so bad if you consider that amount of time y...

I love the month of May. Apple trees are blooming, lilac trees smell like rainbows and I can party like a rockstar. Why? Because it’s my birthday and what better way to celebrate than with free stuff? Basically, it’s been my birthday all month thanks to Dump N’ Run : shampoo, lip balm, a cute dress, rockin’ heels and some summer reads. Least to say the Dump N’ Run has taken away any prejudice I might have had about receiving free things, hence my impatience to set up the permanent Free Store and my frequent visits to the FreeCycle website. But back to the birthday part. I remembered reading about a girl having spent a day roaming Ottawa for birthday freebies. Not only do I get to wear my favourite dress and receive funny phone calls from relatives, but I can also get free stuff?? AWESOME! Thanks to Google and Yahoo Answers, I managed to track down a few stores I really wanted to visit, besides the obvious restaurants that offer a slice of cake or a drink. Here are a few fun on...

I had a scare a while back in the form of a mysterious phone call... Background: I never get calls at work, mostly because I have a strong distaste for talking on the phone and do all my contacting by email or in person but also because I don’t have a work extension nor a phone plan on my cell (hell, I still have a 519 number from home). This equalled my terror when Jon’s voice floated over the cubicle wall to inform me that someone was on the phone for me. In fact, I thought he was joking. Answering the phone, I had my wavering, stranger voice on to hear a man inquire about a report I had written on Water Fountains on campus. I relaxed a little as he explained that he worked for the Green Education Council of Canada and was interested in setting up a meeting between myself and their CEO to discuss post bottled water ban tactics. ASLDFHEJFKGHY^N%$%[insert excitement here] It just seemed like a great opportunity to showcase the University’s progress as a bottled water free camp...

Mon introduction dans l'univers du mouvement environnemental est assez plate comme histoire : ma tante travaille dans le même édifice que la Saskatchewan Environmental Society . Elle m’avait perçu comme un jeune militant potentiel déjà à l'âge de 11 ou 12 ans, et donc elle m'a amené au boulot un jour. Mon premier souvenir en tant qu’« écologiste officiel » a lui aussi peu d'allure : je siégeais à un comité de planification de ladite organisation sans but lucratif. Je crois que ma première vraie tâche était d'appeler la compagnie qui gère les publicités sur les autobus de Saskatoon (ma voix avait encore à mûrir--la honte). Neuf ans plus tard et je me trouve au Centre de développement durable à l'U d'O. Comme simple bénévole, d'ailleurs. Et un jour, à un atelier, on me demande si je me soumettrais à l'engagement de vivre sans déchets. N'ayant jamais eu l'aptitude qu'a l'individu moyen de dire non, je dis oui. Et voilà ! Deux,...

http://www.sustainable.uottawa.ca/how-can-i-get-involved.html#Take the pledge I took on this challenge with gusto on February 5th - yes, the day of the Superbowl. I made sure the snacks and beverages I prepared were made and served in reusable containers. Then, as an added waste-reduction measure, I sorted through any other materials produced by others and recycled it. One of the best parts of this is that when I pulled a bunch of paper towel out of the garbage to compost it (yeah, garbage picking...it wasn't my finest moment), I found $10!!! Being waste-free really does pay off. As for work, everything I ate had to be packed in reusable containers and transported to and from the office. The hardest part of this was the organics...I had to bring home apple cores and banana peels in order to compost them since there were no bins at work. Everyone in the office thought I was mildly crazy for packing up a container full of organics and encouraging them to do the same, but I ...

I’ve been working on the newsletter for a while now. Trying to make it sexy, easy to read and damn attractive. Besides lathering it in chocolate and honey (the obvious way to make anything attractive), I guess I could work on the design and the content. Move around the columns and rows. Add some flashy colours. Maybe I could add some weird content, for example: “Weird fact of the month: A gorilla can fart ten times louder than a human being”. Would that entice more people to read our newsletter? Or maybe I could do like Cosmo does and add a little corny love story at the bottom that will perpetually end with “to be continued”. If that still doesn't work, we could try a section called “Ten ways to crush compost”, for those who’d rather see old fruit explode. Why am I throwing out so many random ideas? Well, I find it difficult to tell if the content is interesting or not. The content is what I think will interest fellow students. But I don’t know what everyone else wan...

"We are all part of the same compost heap." Let’s face it; Tyler Durden knew his shit- or compost rather. The importance of composting lies at the root of waste diversion (ah ha ha - root, compost = I’m hilarious). We are able to recycle the basics - paper, metal, glass and plastics but the bulk of what is left in most people’s trash is compostable items. I know this because I had the pleasure of sorting through dumpsters and residence rooms after students moved out at the end of April. The main components of student’s (and in all probability the average person’s) trash was compostable (in the form of rotting foods, yum). This surprised me as the campus has a great composting system in place; a campus vermi-composter located near the portables and an off campus mechanical composter, named Oscar, at 200 Lees. This combination of systems allows for 200 tonnes of composting a year. For students in apartment style residences, it is as simple as contacting your residence ...

Spring is now fully upon us, bringing with it an anxiousness to rid oneself of all the habits and possession that we accumulate in the long cold winters. Some students are moving on to new lives having graduated, others may just be moving on to new places, leaving behind their cramped residence rooms, in lieu of less supervised and more spacious digs to live out their future university memories. In any case it has led to an abundance of perfectly good clothes, food, and furniture to end up on roadsides, in dumpsters, and in some cases in our Dump ‘N Run locations. For those of you that haven’t seen the photos, or seen our posts, Dump ‘N Run is a time when we take donations or things we’ve found dumped around the University, sort it, clean it up and then donate it to local charities and shelters, saving hundreds pounds of perfectly good things from ending up in landfill sites. For those of you who have seen the photos and posts, yes we did in fact climb into dumpsters and sort th...