Recycle Mania So this week I am pledging to recycle mania, meaning I am not going to be purchasing or throwing out anything that cannot be recycled or composed. You should try it and see how well you do! Please share if you do in fact try this out! Recycle mania blurb The hardest tasks to accomplish without wasting are the smallest tasks, like air drying your hands after washing them, bringing your own sugar for coffee or just drinking it black. But you know what it’s worth it, so go out and reuse (maybe recycle)! Recycle Mania Summary All in all, recycle mania is a great concept. Reusable mugs, containers and water bottles for the week wasn’t actually that hard to do at all! Just carrying around a bottle is great because you can always quench your thirst without having to buy and throw out a plastic bottle. Containers as well, it is so easy to just rinse them when you are done and use them again the next day. The hardest part of this week would have to be realized that eve...

Waste Free Month Done... Waste Free Life Begins! Ok, so my waste free month is technically done, and I realized that living waste free isn't as hard as it sounds; especially at Uottawa. We have this fantastic recycling program here where practically ANY type of plastic can be recycled at any recycling station on campus! This makes living waste free a lot easier!  During this month I learned a few things.  Mainly I learned that living waste free is the most difficult when you go out places. When you go to a restaurant or a function it is almost impossible to know where your food scraps and things will end up because you can't control that. I also stayed at a hotel with my family and I realized that it's pretty hard to live waste free there because there is no compost or recycling, and even though we put our recycling in a box; who knows where it is going to end up?! Also, living waste free was impossible at my work. I work at BeaverTails on the canal and even though ...

I failed - but not miserably - at being waste free for a week. A pessimist would tell you it's impossible to live waste free while an optimist would say that accepting the challenge is already an improvement from the week prior. I have always tried to reduce, reuse and recycle when it was convenient for me but this competition made me identify my own personal wasteful habits: using tissues, plastic sandwich bags and Q-tips, commuting by car too often, leaving the hot water run and buying treats in non-recyclable packaging, just to name a few. Have I made an oath not to use these products and behave in these ways ever again? No. Becoming more sustainable is like getting in shape - it doesn't happen overnight. I can't promise that I'll never contribute to a landfill, drive a car or enjoy an all dressed chip from a non-recyclable bag. However, each time I am wasteful, I'll think about modifying my consumption and activities next time around in order to lessen my i...

Living waste free is a huge learning experience. Even before I began my official two week period of Pledging to live waste free I had become more aware of the amount of waste/recyclables I go through and was already trying ways to cut back on the waste I produce. Watching the documentary "The Clean Bin project" and learning from the Office of Campus Sustainability, I had already acquired useful tips on how to live waste free before my official two weeks. The amount of items able to be recycled on Campus is amazing, which helped me be able to recycle more. So I admit I was at an advantage to someone who hadn't thought about how to live waste free and who began cold turkey for the Pledge. Since I became more aware of my waste, I have come across situations that I wouldn't have thought twice about if I hadn't been trying to cut back on waste. Take for example paper towels in the campus bathrooms. If there are no hand dryers and only paper towels, I could not thr...

Recyclemania was coming up again this year, and I decided to give it a whirl for three weeks – a week longer than I did it last year. In preparation for the event and throughout the three weeks, grocery shopping became a little more arduous – no products with sneaky plastic wrap or Styrofoam (ie. fresh fish and meat) or plastic bags. Luckily, I already use mesh bags instead of the available thin plastic bags to contain fresh fruits and vegetables. I also carry a reusable grocery bag (one of those ones that roll up into a little bundle) with me all the time in case there’s ever an unplanned grocery trip/purchase/need of a bag. For nixing the plastic wrap/foam plates found with fresh meats, simply buy frozen seafood with recyclable plastic packaging, and meats from a butcher – butcher paper is compostable! In addition to some modifications to my grocery purchases, the disposal of my everyday items needed to be reassessed. Dryer lint? Compostable. Cotton cosmetic pads? Compostable. V...

Day 1: Feb. 3 Today is the first day of RecycleMania, an event held in universities across the country to promote sustainability and waste reduction. I’ve pledged to live waste-free for the entire duration of RecycleMania meaning from today until March 30th, I will throw NOTHING in the garbage!  I’m nearly one day in and so far so good! I had a couple close calls ending with having to fish tissues/cotton balls out of the trash (my own trash, luckily) and put them in their rightful place (my compost bin!). I think Google will be my best friend throughout all of this. Every phrase I’ve searched today has begun with “can you recycle/compost ___?”. Carrying a reusable bag is also a must. Public compost bins are few and far between (even recycling bins can be rare!) so I’ve been chucking all of my things in a bag and carting them back to campus where I can dispose of them properly. So far my only two stumbling blocks have been gum wrappers and the stickers on all of my fruit. Ev...

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when people hear the term “Recyclemania?” Well, if they’re anything like me, most people think of that elevated and energetic sense of arousal one gets when separating paper and plastics. As it turns out, Recyclemania is actually an international recycling competition. And for the University of Ottawa, it’s a yearly waste-reduction campaign, aimed at shedding light on the necessity of sustainability, recycling, and responsible forms of waste management. So it turns out I’m not a doctor of recycling. Who knew? This year’s RecycleMania included a Guerilla Recycling event, which occurred each Thursday night for the month of March. It’s all about black hoodies, latex gloves, and getting elbow-deep in other people’s trash. While part of that may not sound appealing to most of you (really?), the whole process is much more rewarding than it sounds, and that’s not even considering all the loose change to be found at the bottom of the compost bin...

When you think campus sustainability you might think that the solution is more trees or solar panels. What about a campus sound map, or a campus recyclopedia, or maybe a residence neighbourgoods program? Students in the first year Global Environmental Challenges course (ENV 1101B) recently handed in their poster projects for the semester. Their assignment... make the campus more sustainable in their own little way. This semester the course was taught by Dr. Sonia Wesche  who decided to work with the Office of Campus Sustainability through the Community Service Learning program in order to give students a chance to have the opportunity to do some hands on work to improve campus sustainability (yet another Living Laboratory project). And I can tell you that the students did not disappoint. Every project was amazing but I only have enough time to highlight a couple. Campus Noise Map Concept: Create a noise map of the campus that shows the highest levels of noise. ...

It’s that time of year again, the time of year when friends and family get together and celebrate simpler times. So often we find ourselves so consumed in our busy lives that we forget what this time of the year is really about, what every time of the year should be about: energy conservation. This Saturday March 23 from 8:00 to 9:00 pm Earth Hour will once again be upon us, and we here at UOttawa will be turning off the lights, in conjunctions with people and organizations around the world in the collective efforts to draw attention to the need for energy conservation. So here is a list of things you can do this earth hour (in no particular order), while your lights are off 10- Build an epic blanket fort (in hopes that it maybe as awesome as this one ( video )  9- Candle light games night 8- Candle light dinner with that special someone 7- Make and launch your own aerial luminary ( article ) 6- Glow in the dark nerf gun fight with your roomates (be careful of furni...

En 2008, l’université d’Ottawa a lancé un projet pilote afin d’évaluer le potentiel de réutiliser et/ou recycler les meubles à travers ses campus. Le projet consiste en la réutilisation des vieilles stations de travailles, chaises et autres meubles de bureaux par différents groupes sur les campus de l’université. En 2009 seulement, le projet pilote a sauvé près d’un millions de dollars en frais de rachat de meubles ainsi qu’en frais associées à la disposition de ceux-ci. Suite au succès du projet pilote, le Bureau du Développement Durable a pris charge du projet et a commencé à prendre note du montant et type de meubles réutilisés/recyclés dans le but de comptabiliser les frais associés au recyclage de meubles ainsi que les coûts sauvés de l’achat de nouveau meubles. En plus de donner la chance aux départements qui n’ont pas les moyens d’acquérir des meubles, le projet a aussi aidé à meubler quelques écoles, charités ainsi que d’autres groupes à dans la communauté. Nous sommes f...

This might not be a new idea to some but it certainly is a new development that has caught my attention, and just maybe it should have your attention too. University powered community energy hubs are exactly what they sound like, a centralized energy system for houses within a community that is supplied by excess heat from a University campus. A little known fact about Universities is that they tend to over-produce heat in extraordinary quantities. This isn't because campuses are inefficient behemoths (although they sometimes can be), it is simply the reality of trying to generate enough heat to distribute around a large network. For instance, here at uOttawa, in order to heat the far side of the campus we need to create a whole bunch of extra heat at the power plant to ensure sure that the heat at the other end is adequate. In order to be more efficient, uOttawa has been working at reducing heating loads on campus which helps us reduce our overall costs and environm...

Reading week is upon us and that means another edition of the Alternative Student Break (ASB) has arrived. Some of you might remember that last year we had about 9 volunteers that joined our office to create recycling installations on campus. The installations were pretty cool. Our volunteers made a giant chess board out of recycled bottles, a forest out of textbooks, a throne out of cans, etc... The installations were placed all around the campus to share the message of recycling. The participants of course took tonnes of pictures of the experience and told all their friends. I think that they did an amazing job and they actually helped us win RecycleMania (last year the University of Ottawa beat the next group by less than 1%). So this year we of course have to do something to help get people into that recycling feeling again. I think that we might have found the perfect balance between awareness and social marketing. This year we are going to be working on the "Breaki...

Bonjour tout le monde/Hey Everyone! My name is Julie Cook and I’ll be taking over for the amazing Brigitte Morin as Recycling Coordinator on campus for the next year while she is on maternity leave. It is an absolute honour. I’ve had the good fortune of working alongside Brigitte for a few weeks so she could teach me the ropes of this very important position. One of the coolest things I’ve done so far is to take the Pledge to Live Waste-Free for the entire eight weeks of RecycleMania . For anyone who doesn’t already know, RecycleMania is an international competition among over 600 universities and colleges in the world that compete to produce the least amount of waste and the most amount of recyclables per capita. The University of Ottawa has been the top university in Canada for the past four years, and we’re aiming to make it five! RecycleMania this year runs from February 3 to March 30th. We could really use some more volunteers for some of the awesome initiatives we have pl...

I can't say that I feel an overwhelming urge to try something new at the start of the new year, but I can assure you that many people do. My friends have been pestering me to reveal my new year's resolution for 2013 and most of my answers have been met with some rather underwhelmed expressions. I guess you can't get away with "typical" resolutions when you are a sustainability manager. So I started to do a little bit of research about what would be an appropriate resolution for 2013, you know one that is meaningful and easy to do and is good for the planet. But at the same time, the resolution has to be a bit of a sacrifice  I decided to narrow down my resolution to something related to CO2 production. I know that there are a lot of other issues out there to focus on but with so many of my friends coming back from DOHA with stories to tell, it kind of seemed like the right thing to do for this year. The next challenge was to find one of the biggest sources...

I recently had the fortunate opportunity to travel to Doha Qatar for the UNFCCC COP18.  If you don’t know what that is, it’s basically where a bunch of countries from around the world gather together and talk about how climate change is a big problem, but then find excuses (largely the economy) to do almost nothing about it. It seems countries can’t cooperate long enough to actually agree on real ambitious climate targets. Now I suppose that this all should be very disheartening, and there were definitely moments that were, but overall I’d say it was a positive experience for personal growth. I was able to meet and collaborate with other youth from around the world who like me are working to sustain our environment. Together we shared skills, ideas, and projects we had heard of, or were working on, and from that we became stronger and smarter. It reminded me of the importance of cooperation and collaboration, but more so it reminded me of the conversations I had ...