Have you ever heard of a 100 visioning session? The concept is quite popular in planning circles and is very easy to do. Imagine a city, a town, or in this case a campus.... now tell me what you think you would like it to look like in 100 years from now. At first the idea seems a like strange. I don't know what anything will look like in 100 years and I am willing to bet you probably don't either. But in a beautiful way, that is the point. In 100 years anything is possible right? My personal dream is to remodel the uOttawa campus into a forest campus, kind of like what it is like when you visit a national park. Gigantic old growth trees reaching up into the sky; small nooks for students to study and for staff to have their lunch; the sound of birds songs echoing between the branches. Maybe some of the trees could be tapped for sap in the winter and we could make our own special brand of uOttawa maple syrup. Who knows, maybe we could even have study spaces in the form of...

So 2013 has come and gone, but not without some pretty cool sustainability things happening at the University of Ottawa. The year started out with some great news about uOttawa being recognized as the 14th most sustainable university in the world by the UI Green Metric World University Rankings . This was some welcome news after all the hard work that was accomplished by the staff and volunteers at the Office of Campus Sustainability . The Food Services contract was up for renewal and this year marked the first year under a new contract that required much more stringent adherence to sustainable practices. This includes more local food, more recycling, and more promotion about green products, just to name a few. This led to two interesting initiatives in 2013. The first was the push to donate more food to charities rather than throwing it out. The second was the push to become a Fair Trade campus , thereby rendering all the non franchised coffee on campus Fair Trade Certifie...

Promoting sustainability during the Christmas holidays is probably one of the most grim things I have to do each year. Don't get me wrong, I think that there are a tonne of really important things that should be done during the holidays; it's just that often doing the right thing for the environment seems like a real drag on the spirit of the season. Well, I don't think that you have to be a killjoy while doing things for the holidays. I think that there can be a balance between easy, fun, and right for the planet. Here is a list of the things that you can do on campus and at home to make it a green Christmas (other than by global warming of course). Before you leave the campus: 1. SHUT IT ALL DOWN I know this must seem like the most obvious thing, but it is really important. And if you want to have the biggest impact possible, just unplug everything from the wall. This guarantees no power loss to phantom loads. Some items are much worse in terms of being energy v...

It was another great year at the uOttawa community garden , and for all intents and purposes, I think that it was actually one of the greatest years we've had to date. From my personal recollection, there were a couple of great things worth mentioning. First, the garden was given a much deserved face lift. A bunch of beautiful unfinished cedar planks were used to delineate the plot spaces, making them not only more visually appealing, but also more functional (setting clear limits for where to plant and where people can walk). There were also a few more work-bee parties, an opportunity for the community garden members to get together and help clean up the space as a group. And a few more garden meetings, a chance for members to discuss common issues about the garden space. And there were even a couple of social outings, you know... to grab a drink and talk shop. We got to do some experimenting this year, including experimenting with a hay bail garden plot! We also got a...

Marie-Pier, from the Office of Campus Sustainability, holds up a donation for the soup kitchen. At one point or another, you've probably asked the question, "What do they do with all the unsold food on campus?" Maybe you were in a bakery, at the grocery store, or in a restaurant — the point is that you probably noticed a lot of food going to waste. If you’d asked me a year ago, the answer would be simple and sad: the landfill. That said, I’m happy to report that we've changed that for the better. It turns out that there’s this thing called the Good Faith Food Act (Food Donation Act in Ontario), which protects you from liability if you donate food to a charity in "good faith" — meaning that, if you take proper precautions to make sure the food is still good to eat, you won’t get sued in the event something happens or someone gets sick. This way, more food can be donated while still ensuring some kind of quality control. Our campus food provide...

Vous vous demandez tous surement ce que nous faisons comme travail pour le développement durable en tant qu’étudiant. C’est un travail qui comprend plusieurs dimensions et plusieurs projets. Réseaux sociaux- grâce aux réseaux sociaux nous avons fait la promotion de la Gratuiterie , un magasin où l’on trouve de tout et croyez-le ou non, TOUT est gratuit! Tu entres, tu choisis et tu sors! C’est une manière de réduire le montant de déchets qui s’en vont dans les dépotoirs. Sauver de l’énergie- nous sommes quatre étudiantes, toutes dans différentes années à l’Université d’Ottawa (soit de la 1ere à la 3e année). Nous passons à travers les bâtiments sur le campus de l’Université afin de faire un compte de tout ce qui est branché aux murs, soit les ordinateurs, écrans, ordinateur portable, haut-parleurs, lampe, micro-ondes, entre autres. Nous faisons tout ça dans le but de recueillir des données qui vont permettre aux ingénieurs du développement durable de trouver des solutions pour un...

It can be all too easy to get stuck in a rut. The school term is well under way, and I know between work and school there is little room for deviation in my established routine. But that’s the thing about routines - they are comfortable and they function sufficiently, so we rarely break from them until they are antiquated. However, more so than our day-to-day practices, habits of thought die hard. It is too easy to get stuck in the same line of thought, to approach everything from the same lens, and moreover to stop asking the important questions. I’m writing this because I have been catching myself and others fall into this fallacy of circular logic. It’s important to remember there is an infinite amount of means to the same end, and just because something has always been done a certain way doesn't mean it has to be done that way, should be done that way, or that is the best way to it. I find this to be a particularly common method of thinking when I talk to people about t...

Have you ever gone on a shopping spree, and no matter how great the pieces you bought looked on you, you couldn’t shake the feeling of guilt for having spent too much cash? Well I have a solution for all you shopaholics out there who don’t have the dough to support your favourite hobby: a free store shopping spree! I recently had time to go down to the store and rummage through all of the racks; I found some amazing treasures that have become staple pieces for my fall wardrobe! Here are a few examples of things I have picked up. Le Petit Prince is my all time favourite children’s book so I fell in love with this shirt instantly. However, I do have a confession to make: I made some slight modifications to it. This was a bit of an oversized t-shirt for me, so I simply cut off the sleeves and made the neckline a bit lower (to make it a bit more feminine) and voilà! There are some pretty wicked graphic tees at the free store who are just looking for homes, and this is a great way...

Incredible and unfortunate, but true: Canadians are the biggest producers of municipal waste per capita in the developed world, according to a study by the Conference Board of Canada . This week is National Waste Reduction Week (from October 21st to 27th), and we’ll be making important changes to the recycling counters on campus — all 170 of them! — so that most of them will have 4 categories: Metal, Plastic, Glass  Mixed Paper Compost  Garbage.  Our aim is to divert as much waste from landfill as possible while at the same time encouraging better recycling and composting practices among students and staff. Last year we composted 70 tons of organic material through the University’s industrial composter. Hopefully, adding compost options to more of the recycling counters will increase that number quite a bit. Besides ensuring that many more recycling counters have compost options, the yellow signs that say “all plastics” will be changed to read “metal, plas...

When faced with the task of furnishing the empty space in her research lab, uOttawa linguistics professor Tania Zamuner turned to the university’s Furniture Reuse Program, which transplants gently used office furnishings from one part of campus to another. Photo by  Tania Zamuner Program coordinator Alex Forest gave Prof. Zamuner a tour of the warehouse, and was able to connect her with a set of desks, hutches and chairs that are in mint condition. You’d never know they weren’t brand new, and now Prof. Zamuner’s graduate and undergraduate students have a comfortable and functional space to work. “I'm very pleased with the results,” says Prof. Zamuner. “Since adding the furniture, the lab is constantly full with students and my research is moving forward because there is a common area from which students are working and collaborating.” Moreover, the furniture was provided for free, saving Prof. Zamuner and the Centre for Child Language Research approximately $10,712.03 ...

Working at a University gives me the chance to work on a bunch of really big projects with big budgets. Currently the University of Ottawa is getting started on the second phase of the EcoProsperity Project , a series of deep energy retrofits that will help save uOttawa millions of dollars in utilities costs. But that's not what I want to focus on, I would rather focus on something much smaller because I think its impacts could be much bigger. Today I want to advocate for the little things that you might not normally think of but nevertheless could be the key to unraveling our energy problems. Have you ever thought of getting rid of your screen saver, deleting the extra content in an email, or using the stairs whenever you are going down a floor or two? Now most people`s first inclination to save energy is to cut the heat and turn off the lights. Sure, that is certainly useful but there are many emergency lights that just can`t be shut off and let`s face it, who wants to sit...

Whether you’re packing it up and heading out of town for a weekend with family and friends or sticking around and planning your own feast, there are a number of things you can do to show some gratitude to the Earth and make your festivities a little more sustainable this year. All together now! — There’s something to be said for gathering people together under one roof, using energy in one place instead of multiple houses. Bonus points for carpooling to get there.   Buy local and in season — Ever notice how yams aren’t really so popular in the summer? Eating seasonally around this time of year is almost built-in to the holiday, since Thanksgiving stems from the Fall harvest tradition. That said, your yams could be trucked into your local grocery store from halfway across the continent. Try hitting up a local farmers’ market, and check your food labels. Buy organic if you can. It tastes better, is better for your health, and bees everywhere will thank you.   Use re-usab...

If Part One was freeing myself from the shackles, Part Two was being blinded by the light. In non-Plato's-Allegory-of-the-Cave terms, this was the hump of the trip. A lot happened over the course of the last 9 days. Over 900 km and the equivalent of two solid days of biking will take a toll on anyone. However, this was not just the biking. There were tears and tantrums, hours spent lost and confused, torrential downpours and wicked winds that cut my speed in half. Quebec was not for the faint of heart. Or lungs. Or abs. Or legs. Taking all that into consideration, Theodore Roosevelt once said: “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.” So has this venture been worth doing? Most certainly. Has it been sustainable? That is a question that can not be answered so easily. Let's loo...

Why sell paper when you can sell the thing paper is made out of? Sorry for the crude intro but how else am I supposed to get your attention these days? Today's tale comes from a student suggestion that was proposed as a part of a project for the Office of Campus Sustainability this past year. The project focused on trying to create more indoor green space on campus. The suggestion didn't really blow me away at first. It read, "Instead of having a poster sale every semester in the University Centre, we should have a plant sale." I mean how could boring plants ever compete with sexy, sleek posters that are focus grouped, over designed, industry branded, and backed up with every marketing trick you can imagine? No brainer right? Exxxxxxcceeeeeept... So there is the concept out there known as Nature Deficit Disorder. The idea boils down to this; if you are separated from nature you become depressed, anxious, and unable to function properly. As strange as this ma...

Est-ce que tu te considère comme un environnementaliste? Est-ce que les enjeux environnementaux vous intéresse, mais vous n'avez jamais eu la chance d'en apprendre plus à ce sujet? Si ta réponse est oui à une de ces deux questions, peut-être que ceci pourrait vous intéresser… La fin de semaine du 25 au 27 octobre, les éco-mentors du jour de la terre seront les hôtes du ''Beyond Green Youth Summit'' au Campus St. George de l'Université de Toronto. Un forum de jeunesse comprenant 1000 jeunes âgé entre14 et 30 ans, 150 éducateurs ET une belle occasion de discuter des enjeux environnementales par le biais d'ateliers, de conférences et de performances. Les ateliers comprendront des thèmes tels que l'écologie et la conservation, la culture et la consommation, l'éthique et la gouvernance, et plus encore. Mais ce n'est pas tout! Il y aura aussi des spécialistes tels que The water Brothers, Rick Miller et Lee Maracle qui seront présents pour v...