Great news! The one sided paper notebook logo redesign competition has come to an end and we have found a winner! The lucky winner will get a $100 cash prize! Above is the winning logo! There is definitely some work to do, because we need to decide what name we will be going with for the program. If you have ideas, send them our way! As an update, the notebooks are going well! This is one great step in getting awesome notebooks sold on campus. Over the summer, we will be working more towards realising this project by September. Hopefully by 101 week, you will be able to get tons of cheap, environmentally friendly notebooks! - sarah jayne

PHOTO CREDIT: Dave Weatherall So many of you may have heard yesterday that we banned bottled water on campus. Well this an official shout-out to the students that made it possible (especially Jenna Dunsby, Sarah Jayne King, and Michelle Lamarche). But did you hear about the other official announcement about the EcoChampions? You didn’t??? Well allow me to explain. Yesterday the office of Campus Sustainability set in motion the EcoNetwork, a group of individuals (aka EcoChampions) that will spread the good word about sustainable development in their departments and units. For the Most part this is an employee program but we are tuning it up to get students involved too. So what’s the big idea and how does it work. Simple, every month we bring together all the EcoChampions on campus and have a discussion / workshop / brainstorm about how to make our campus greener. The EcoChampions are given tools – like composting bins, or computer programs – that allow them to make changes in their res...

Nous avons encore une fois dominée au concours de Recyclo Manie. Nous nous sommes placés en première place parmi les collèges et Universités Canadiennes pour les deux catégories; ‘minimisation de déchets’ et ‘Grand champion’. Sur le plan international, nous nous sommes placés en 16 e place dans la catégorie de ‘Grand champion’ et 13 e place dans la catégorie de ‘Minimisation de déchets’ parmi 267 collèges et universités en Amérique du Nord (y compris une université Indienne). L’année dernière, il y eu 204 collèges et universités en Amérique du Nord qui ont participés à la compétition Recyclo Manie ; cette année il y en eu 267. En total, la compétition a pu recruter 600 collèges et universités à participer (plusieurs parmi elles ont participés en tant qu’écoles en ‘essai’. C'est-à-dire que leur résultats ont été calculés, mais ils ne comptaient pas.) et ensemble, pendant les dix semaines de compétition, les participants ont recyclé et composté plus de 84 millions lb d’articles ! ht...

Avez-vous trop de choses à rapporter avec vous cet été ou vos pantalons ne vous font plus? Parfait! Emportez-nous vos vêtements, coutellerie, vaisselle, etc. usagés pour être réutilisés; à la station «Déposez et Dégagez» du 12 avril au 1er mai. Ces objets peuvent être déposés sur une table à l’entrée de votre résidence (90 U, LBC, THN, HSY), ou dans le bac devant le bureau de la FÉUO (UCU). Tous vos articles seront redistribués soit à la première Gratuiterie pour les étudiants internationaux, ou à plusieurs charités spécifiques en besoin. L’année dernière, nous avons pu protéger 1.7 tonnes métriques d’articles des sites d’enfouissement! Si vous avez des questions ou commentaires, s’il vous plaît contacter Brigitte Morin, Coordonnatrice du Recyclage et diversion de déchets : bmorin@uottawa.ca ou 613.562.5800 x 3997 ***** Do you have too much stuff to bring back with you this summer or your pants no longer fit you? Perfect! Bring us your used clothes, dishes, utensils, etc. to be re-u...

A couple of months ago I blogged about something called Open Green Maps, or if I didn’t I meant to. I am not sure if you are familiar with the Open Map concept but it is really quite simple. Take your standard map of anything and Open Maps allows you to personalize the content on the map. So you can add a picture or a description of a location to the map. Now enter the Open ‘Green’ Map. The first time I ever heard about a Green Map was at a sustainable campuses conference in Vancouver. It turns out that some geography students of Royal Roads College had collected a bunch of coordinates for some of the green characteristics of their campus and then laid those coordinates over top of a campus map. And voila; instant Green Map. But things have gotten a lot easier since those days of collecting individual GPS points and feeding them into a GIS program. We can all thank Google Maps for that. Although Google didn’t invent the concept of an Open Green Map, they certainly have helped bring out...

What is a waste audit? Well my friends, a waste audit is when we organize the collection of all the waste and recycling from a given space (all the bags are labeled by room and waste type i.e. recycling mixed papers room 229), and we evaluate the contents of each bag. Each bag is opened and the items inside are separated by type (mixed papers, waste, etc.) and weighed. With the information noted during the waste audit, we can calculate the contamination rate of each bag, and of the whole building (i.e. the percentage of items which were in the wrong receptacle). We can then study trends in the data; for example, if people are often throwing a specific item in the wrong bin it is perhaps because the bin isn’t labeled properly, or the sings aren’t clear enough. Recently, we completed a waste audit of the entire Fauteux building, and here are the results: 32% of what was found in each bag was considered to be some type of contamination (which is above what is usual for campus buildings…)....

Qu’est-ce qu’une vérification de déchets ? Bien les ami(e)s, une vérification de déchets est lorsqu’on organise la collecte de déchets et recyclage (tout identifié par type et endroit ex. recyclage de papier, comptoir de recyclage devant salle 323) d’un endroit, lors d’une période de temps et que l’on évalue ce qu’il y a à l’intérieur de chaque sac. Chaque sac est ouverts et les articles sont triés et pesés par type (papier, déchets, etc.). Avec toutes les quantités notées nous pouvons calculer le taux de contamination de chaque sac, c'est-à-dire, le pourcentage des articles qui ne devraient pas être dans ce sac (ex. des déchets dans le réceptacle pour le métal/plastique/verre). On peut par la suite étudier les résultats et trouver des tendances ; Si par exemple tout le monde jette un article recyclable en particulier c’est peut-être parce que ce n’est pas bien indiqué sur les affiches ! Récemment, nous avons compléter une vérification de déchets de l’édifice Fauteux en entier, et...

A couple weeks ago we hosted a “No Idea Too Green” event to discuss the designing of a green Student Center. The new Student Center will take a couple of years to build and will be attached to the current Jock Turcot building. This building will be by students and for students, so we can make it whatever we want! At the “No Idea Too Green” event we came up with lots of great ideas of how to make our new Student Center great for both students and the ecology that we are a part of. Ideas ranged from urban aquaculture, to a living wall , to micro wind turbines. Someone even came up with an idea to create a dance floor that will harness the energy of students’ crazy dance moves . Some of the ideas were focused on improving sustainability while enhancing already existent student groups, such as creating a permanent service space for the People’s Republic of Delicious and a kitchen that would be open for anyone to use. Indoor green space could double up as a way to regulate temperatur...

Photo credit: 3s.images.com Well I've never wrote a blog before so excuse the inaccuracies of how I am suppose to come about this. I never thought I would write a blog but within minutes of arriving on the job I stumbled upon the Eco team of Ottawa U mentioning Facebook, Twitter (which I've also never done), and a plethora of other informational vectors. Maybe I should write about my agreed slavery to Jon and Brigitte, or the fact that for the passed 30 minutes I've been taking out stitches one by one of a uOttawa jacket. But all that would be unnecessary banter. Sticking to the facts, my first week has been a blast. Arriving on the scene a little later than normal because of the unforeseen sending home of the last participant, it was my job to be the replacement. Throughout the week I walked around the large campus putting signs on recycle bins, composting for the Protection building which eventually goes into this huge worm pit (actually really interesting!), and other re...

Que faisaient plus d'un milliard de personnes partout dans le monde de 20 h 30 à 21 h 30 l'année dernière le 28 mars? Ils éteignaient leurs lumières à l'appui de l'Heure pour la Terre du Fonds mondial pour la nature (FMN). En fait, plus de 10 millions de Canadiens et des milliers d'entreprises ont participé dans plus de 275 villes partout au pays dans le but de sensibiliser les gens au changement climatique. Beaucoup d'efforts conjoints seront déployés partout au pays. Par exemple, Hydro Ottawa examinera la diminution de la consommation d'électricité à Ottawa pendant cette période d'une heure. Beaucoup de points d'intérêts comme la Tour CN et la Colline du Parlement éteindront leur éclairage non essentiel. Le mot-symbole « Canada » et l'éclairage architectural des immeubles du gouvernement de l'ensemble du pays seront éteints à l'occasion de l'Heure pour la Terre. De nombreux événements ont aussi lieu à Ottawa, comme une veillée pa...

Many University of Ottawa students only make it through paper and exam season with a little help from their friend caffeine. However, at the other end of that caffeine addiction, is a coffee grower who often gets little pay for her hard work growing your coffee beans. Luckily, fair trade coffee has emerged over the years, cutting out middle men and often allowing these hardworking producers to work in better conditions and get paid prices closer to what they need to survive. While, as many international development students will tell you, fair trade is still far from the ideal and often presents a whole new set of barriers for producers, it generally ensures that a little more of your coffee dollar makes it to those who grew it. With the climate changing, the coffee equation is getting ever more complicated. Higher temperatures are affecting crops and making them flower prematurely, decreasing yield, and thus the amount of money that the producer makes. Growers are searching for creati...

Photo credit: TerraChoice website La dernière année a bourgeonné de 'publicité verte'. À l'heure actuelle, les compagnies se font la compèt' pour tenter d'être les plus 'vertes' afin d'attirer la clientèle. On se bouscule pour écrire des trucs comme 'fait de produits naturels', 'biodégradable', 'nous vous offrons un produit vert', 'nous nous soucions de l'environnement', ETC. Tous ces mots apaisants pour le consommateur peuvent être catégorisés sous une pratique que l'on appelle la 'mascarade écologique' ou le 'Greenwashing'. Terra Choice a publié son rapport intitulé ' Les six sept péchés de la mascarade écologique ' (The Six Seven Sins of Greenwashing) où vous trouverez des trucs pour ne pas vous faire avoir par les compagnies qui tentent de vendre des produits en prêchant être aussi verts que des kiwis. Vous serez surpris pour ce que vous pouvez tomber... Bonne lecture! - marie-pierre ( h...

Check out this post from an anonymous campus community forced to do a waste audit... The amount of coffee cups contaminated at Fauteux Hall, in the Faculty of Law building, is shocking and depressing. How difficult can it be to properly empty out the left-over coffee from the cups and throw them in the correct bin? It may mean nothing to you but it means the world for the person sorting out these cups. Everyone complains about the environment, but some people still don’t recycle properly on campus. Wondering what happens to your coffee cups after you are done drinking? I bet you’d say they are recycled, right?! That's true, except, many coffee cups still end up in landfills. Most coffee cups processed for recycling still have lots of coffee in them because people don’t throw out what’s left, which unfortunately contaminates the cups. The contaminated cups—where the coffee liquid has deeply penetrated the layer of the coffee cups— end up in garbage bags destined for landfills while ...

Hopefully you know where to get fair trade goods on campus. Café Alt sells fair trade coffee exclusively, Chartwells locations have at least one choice that is fair trade. T-shirts purchased through the SFUO are fair trade...Not much else is offered on campus that’s fair trade. Have you ever heard of Fair Trade Towns? It’s a campaign that essentially creates standards for a town to go entirely fair trade. There are criteria that a town must achieve, like passing a resolution at city council in support, and to using only fair trade coffee and tea at meetings and in the office. It’s then up to the businesses to offer fair trade products, and if enough do, you’re closer to becoming a fair trade town. Attract some media coverage and strike a steering committee devoted to planning for the future, and you have yourself a fair trade town. We can replicate this model on university campuses. The student union and the administration passing motions and devoting themselves to fair trade products ...