Photo credit: Jonathan Rausseo It's that time of the year again. As all the students head home for the summer there is a mountain of stuff left behind to prove that "I was here". Two years ago the Office of Campus Sustainability collected approximately 1.7 tonnes of stuff; last year it was about 2.3 tonnes; this year... who knows. One thing is for certain though, there will always be more stuff. The Dump and Run (yeah I am know... who named this thing anyways) is technically an annual campus move out event. In reality it is really a story of perspectives an realities. Perspective #1 - The Student (in rez) It is the end of the year, I have 5 exams and 2 papers to hand in. My last exam is on the second last day of the month. I have to leave on the first of May by noon and there are still 2 parties to go to and too many friends to say goodbye to. On my last day in rez my parents arrive and I have exactly 15 mins to pack everything into the car before we leave. I can't ta...

Photo credit: Unknown Yes! Examinations are coming to a close and because I am not studying at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, I am ecstatic that second year is almost over and that summer will soon officially begin. For those of you in residence, you may be relieved that your parents are on their way to collect you and bring you to your hometown OR they are coming to move you into another apartment for the summer months. Either way, the process of moving is stressful especially if you do not have a parent with a truck. Once the backseat gets filled, your father will start complaining about all the clothing you have accumulated over the semester and will start to threaten you with garbage bags. If this happens, and you are forced to leave some things behind, tell your father to put those garbage bags away and that Dump and Run will gladly take your stuff. We’re collecting basically everything in decent condition: your half empty cleaning supplies, gently worn clean clothing...

Photo credit: Jonathan Rausseo I cannot overstate this enough, PEOPLE REALLY WANT TO GARDEN! I have received an endless flood of emails from enthusiastic gardeners looking for a plot on campus. I suppose this all started last year when we dramatically increased the garden plot offerings on campus. We surged from about 8 plots to about 50. There were a couple of problems for sure last year. First, we didn't get the garden going until July, about a month later then when everyone typically starts seeding. On top of that there was the possibility that the land would eventually be taken away for another development. And of course we had never managed a garden of that size so everything was a new experience. Of course some dude named Murphy showed up and we were told that the garden land was going to be developed for the CAPEA project. No one was really surprised though, we all knew that there was a possibility of that happening. But the community didn't give up and dozens of success...

Photo credit: Jonathan Rausseo Consider, for a moment, the average day of the average office worker...the desks that must accommodate him...the wheelie chairs he must sit in...the counters he must splay things on...the phones he must answer...the cabinets he must put files in...the cupboards he must open....Have the picture? That's what's needed to sustain 1 office worker. Now let's do some multiplication. How many office workers are there per office? How many offices are there per floor? How many floors are there per building? How many buildings are there per district? How many districts are there per city? How many cities are there on the Earth? Granted, the numbers vary a lot from to city-to-city to district-to-district to building-to-building to floor-to-floor to office-to-office to office-worker-to-office-worker. But multiplying seven numbers together, regardless of how small they are originally, is usually going to have a huge result. Considering the fact that 25 citi...

Photo credit: unknown Chances are your exam period is split into a few sections of intense studying, stressing, no sleep, and lots of energy drinks versus sleeping all day to catch up those crazy few days. I went through all of that several times, and I wish that I knew what I do today to go through that period again and do it right (for my body!) Here are a few facts for the students studying for that A in Biology, and for the average person who is wondering why they might always tired (either way, I was definitely wrong about a couple of questions!): Q: A good night’s sleep can improve memory and boost creativity. True or false? TRUE : Recent research shows that sleep actually strengthens, reorganizes, and restructures our memories. While we sleep we hold on to the most emotional parts of our memories. Subjects were shown a scene with an emotional object such as a car wreck. After a full night’s sleep, subjects were more likely to recall the car wreck (the emotional object) rather th...

Photo Credit: Jonathan Rausseo Despite being almost 50 years old in origin, 'Freeganism' is not a very well known philosophy. It's a way of life in which people attempt to eliminate their negative environmental and economic impact on the world by living only off of, well, garbage. If Jimmy dislikes his sandwich and decides to throw it in the trash, Bill can take that opportunity to indulge on Jimmy's half eaten 'waste-food' and eat that sandwich himself. By eating what would have been garbage anyway, Bill ate a meal that didn't require production AND he saved something from the landfill. A Sandwich saved is a sandwich earned. "They eat garbage?! That's disgusting!!!" If that food was a half-eaten Jimmy-slobber sandwich, I would agree with you. If that food was infested with mold and disease and decay, I would agree with you. If that food was actually inedible, I would agree with you. Freeganism would just be the nice way of saying 'rat mimi...

Okay, I might be jumping the gun (ahead of the French debate) but what happened to the environment. It wasn't even brought up once in the Leader's Debate yesterday. Come on! Last time the debates happened the environment was one of the biggest issues, if not the biggest. Almost every economic stimulus package from other countries around the world included a significant investment in green technology and resource efficiency. Not in Canada. I was really hoping that there would be a lively debate about the environment, hell I would even settled for a passing comment about a platform promise... but nothing? Okay, in all fairness, there was mention about Bill C-30 and how quickly it was killed. But is that it? What about the fisheries, what about the oil sands, what about our food security, what about our climate change obligations? I am crossing my fingers in the hopes that they will pick up this question tonight in the French debate. I am not the type of person that likes to choos...

Photo credit: Jonathan Rausseo Mon deux mois sans déchets ont pris leur fin officiellement le 2 avril, et c’était une expérience formidable. J’ai recommencé à faire presque toute ma nourriture moi-même, j’ai appris que presque tous les produits que j’utilise à tous les jours sont disponible en vrac, et plus important encore; j’ai appris que si tu as ton propre contenant, ils te vendront le produit dans ton propre contenant! (il suffit de demander). Mes découvertes préférées lors de mon défi sans déchets sont; l’extrait de vanille ou d’amandes est disponible en vrac au Market Organics (Rue York dans le Marché By), les petits gâteaux organiques (et végétaliens) sont bien meilleurs que les petits gâteaux que j’avais goûté auparavant, et oui, il existe de la soie dentaire compostable! Les déchets que je n’ai pas pu éviter sont les pansements (je me suis très bien coupée lors de mon défi!), et les gommettes sur certains fruits et légumes. J’ai une toute petite boîte à bijoux qui contient me...

Photo credit: Jonathan Rausseo I've become a seasoned recycling veteran. I know what's made up of what, what it breaks down into, how it gets sorted, and what happens to it. On an industrial scale, it's actually amazing. The automatic recycling systems set in place in major Canadian cities is really impressive ( check out this video ), and we're more than equipped with what we need to recycle any and all plastic, paper, cardboard, metal, food, glass. When you really think about it, thats really all our waste is made up of, yet there's MOUNDS of garbage being produced every year. Why? Because the recycling industry doesn't matter if people don't recycle. For the last 3 weeks, all the bags recovered from the recycling stations in the Cafeteria have been thrown into the garbage. The staff has decided to give up on sorting them because the bins are so contaminated you can't even tell what they were supposed to house! Shredder and I have been collecting hands...

Photo credit: Jonathan Rausseo So long as something 'guaranteed' by a company/product is not written in clear, factual letters or official, governmentally issued symbols (Such as the plastic 1-7 recycling sign), you can pretty safely assume that assuming anything about them is a bad idea. A prime example of this is the "Respect the Environment" text written on the bottom of a Tim Horton's coffee cup, or the fact that there is a picture of a Tim Horton's cup on the 'paper' section of Tim Horton's waste stations. Is the Tim Horton's coffee cup recyclable? TECHNICALLY the answer is yes. TECHNICALLY, if coffee HASN'T BEEN POURED INTO THE CUP YET, the cup is paper recyclable. But the moment coffee has been poured into a disposable cup, it stains the inner edge of the cup and makes it damp and completely useless. On top of that, if any coffee is left in the cup when it's disposed (Which is all too common a happenstance for our disgustingly wa...

Photo credit: unknown Spring weather has officially arrived, and as I pull out my bike from winter storage I realize that it may need a few tune-ups so I consult my dear colleague Marie-Pier’s blog on cycling tips. And after making some adjustments I decide to go for a nice ride downtown Ottawa, although fearful at first, it turns out alright. I am fairly nervous biking downtown because the majority of my biking experience stems from growing up in the countryside where your biggest worry is the traffic around five o’clock when all the neighbours are coming home from work for the day. I’ve had a few close calls biking along highways that had no additional room on the side other than choppy gravel that pulls you into the ditch, but other than that my biking experience at home has been very enjoyable. This year I decided to bring my bike to Ottawa with the promise to wear my helmet at all times to my mother and to be cautious when biking on busy roads. The first few weeks of school I plan...

We just finished World Water day, and as Canadians, we tend to undervalue our water systems and exploit them ruthlessly through personal, industrial and agricultural use. One could argue that this is due to the “staple thesis” or Canada’s economy being reliant on the extraction and production of natural resources but really? That’s kind of a lame excuse I would expect to hear from someone in economics (sorry, sister). In terms of water, Canada is well off geographically. It is surrounded by three oceans, has the large basins of the Great Lakes and Hudson Bay and is riddled with smaller lakes along its surface- particularly in the Niagara Escarpment region. In fact, Canada possesses the third largest amount of renewable freshwater in the world following Brazil and Russia. However, Canadians are terrible at using their water. This precious resource is being exhausted by Canadians who each use on average 335L a day! Per capita, our country ranks second last in water consumption- followed ...

Photo credit: unknown En route vers le Canada, je trouve que je me suis quand même bien débrouillée pour vivre sans déchet à New York, surtout malgré le fait que la ville n’offre pas de service de compostage pour ses huit millions d’habitants. Voici quelques-unes de mes péripéties: 1- Vous pouvez voir ce que j’ai fait avec ma tranche de citron du restaurant indien sur vidéo ici. 2- Pour acheter une salade toute prête sans déchet, regardez ceci (à venir sous peu; la vidéo est avec ma copine). 3- Pour ce qui est de mes déchets organiques, je les ai compostés un peu partout en faisant du «gorilla composting»; c’est-à-dire que j’ai creusé un pouce dans le sol pour les y enterrer. J’ai rendu le sol heureux à Central Park et dans une plante-bande sur une rue au centre-ville. 4- Je me suis forcée à manger un brocoli, la moitié d’un poivron et un demi concombre crus parce que je n’avais pas le temps de les cuisiner, que je partais et qu’ils allaient probablement se perdre. Mmm, des pieds de br...

Photo credit: Brigitte Morin Last week end, I attended the Ottawa Green Expo at Lansdowne Park. I was impressed with the crowd numbers; we had to squeeze through the masses of people to get just about anywhere. For the promotions, I don’t know what they did, but keep doing it; it works! However, on the Expo side, I didn’t see any new innovative products or amazing new technologies, nothing impressive. The products being displayed were on average too expensive for the average person (a $ 70,000 solar panel is really nice, but I do not have the means to purchase it!). Also, I was extremely disappointed (MEGA disappointed) that all the sample containers were made of compostable materials, which would be great…if there were any COMPOST receptacles! I didn’t know that people still think that compostable containers will decompose rapidly in a landfill; they will not, in fact they become worse than waste as they will produce methane when they eventually decompose in the landfill (just like fr...

Photo credit: Brigitte Morin La fin de semaine dernière je suis allée à l’Exposition Verte au parc Lansdowne à Ottawa. J’étais impressionnée du fait qu’il y avait tellement de personnes à l’expo, que nous devions de faufilé parmi les centaines de personnes qui bloquaient tout passage. Pour la promotion, je ne sais pas ce que vous avez fait, mais ça fonctionne! Par contre, il n’y avait pas vraiment de démonstrations innovantes, ni nouveau produits abordables pour la personne moyenne (c’est bien beau des panneaux solaires à $70,000, mais je n’ai pas les moyens d’en acheter!). Aussi, j’ai été extrêmement déçue (vraiment, méga déçue!) que tous les démonstrateurs servaient leurs échantillons dans des contenants compostables, ce qui serait formidable….s’il y avait des réceptacles pour le COMPOST! Je n’étais pas au courant que la personne moyenne croyait encore que des contenants compostable ne se décomposent pas s’ils ne sont pas compostés! C’est incroyable, la ville d’Ottawa a un système d...