Last year for Earth Day, we recapped the top 50 things uOttawa has done in the past decade to be a more sustainable campus. We promised to never try to put out that much content in one day ever again... but then 2021 happened and we didn't have to because everyone else at uOttawa shared their stories for Earth Day. Here is a recap of all the Earth Day messages that we could find shared around the campus. And you can check out our website to see some of the highlights. Impact Rankings uOttawa participates in the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings, which track an institutions progress on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. We had some outstanding results this year! Flying Less in Academia Researcher Ryan Katz-Rosene has helped author a resource guide on Flying less in Academia . The guide is meant to help reduce the carbon footprint of academics. Canadian Plastics Pact Sustainable Prosperity, an environmental think-tank on campus, has helped launch the Canadian Pla...

This semester we are featuring a series of blog posts from students in the ENV 2301 course "History of Environmental Thought". We are super happy to highlight the thoughts and ideas of these bright young individuals. A student working with Poly plastic recycling machine, (Poly Plastics, 2020). The University of Ottawa is dedicated in its mission to create a sustainable campus that uses innovation and technology to push towards a green future. The Office of Campus Sustainability is a pillar in this mission. They engage students by creating interactive campaigns that are hard to miss on campus, all while generating conversation around how to be more environmentally conscious.  Campaigns often focus on waste diversion and engage the community where students have the chance to show off their favourite reusable mug for a free coffee or connect with local farmers while picking up a weekly produce box . Although the University of Ottawa has made sustainable steps towards a waste-fr...

One year in and we are can sort of see the light at the end of the tunnel. With a COVID vaccine on the way, we can take comfort that many of the restrictions we see today will be toned down. But, with vaccines having an efficacy rate of up to 95%, that could still potentially mean  a lot of cases after everyone is inoculated. (5% of Canada's population of 35 Million = 1,750,000 potential cases across the country after vaccination, but herd immunity will slow down and prevent infections)  So it is prudent to think that there will still be the need for some COVID precautions after mass vaccine campaigns are finished. But beyond COVID, there are other reasons we might want to keep up some precautions. This time last year, Canada had reported over 26,000 cases of the flu, and this year there were 57 ... IN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY!!! Clearly, with a bit of prudence, there can be a significant drop in communicable diseases. At the start of the summer of 2020, people were venturing outsid...

After our last post about green roofs at the University of Ottawa, I got a lot of questions about why we can't have green roofs everywhere on campus. If the answer was simple, I wouldn't have to write a entire blog post about it... but since I am writing a post... you can probably take the hint that this is a bit more complicated then a yes/no kind of thing. As a quick reminder, the University has a design imperative in place that implies green roofs will be installed in any case where the building can take the weight without a new support system, that the building is still going to be around in 20 years, or if the roof wouldn't serve better as a place for solar panels. Photo credit - kingcounty.gov HOW MUCH CO2 COULD WE SEQUESTER? First thing people were asking me about was sequester CO2. If roofs can take carbon out of the air, why not do more of this? Of course all plants sequester CO2 but a green roof can't do as much as a tree and certainly not as much as a peat bo...

It's hard to imagine the uOttawa campus without some of its most iconic buildings. It goes without saying that a building like Tabaret plays an instrumental role in the identity of the campus. Not only was it one of the first buildings on campus, but it also serves as the inspiration for the modern logo for the University (although there is missing pillar but we don't talk about that). The Tabaret building was even used as the setting for the movie Decoys in 2014. Another pretty iconic building is SITE . Built in 2002 as uOttawa's response to the massive tech craze of the early 2000's, there aren't many buildings with as many unique architectural characteristics as SITE. Big windows, stainless steel vents, concrete fins, exposed pillars and mechanical duct-work... it is one of a kind (except that Lakehead University built a very similar building a few years later). But I want to talk about another type of iconic building on campus. You see, an iconic building might ...

Can you imagine a world without garbage and landfills? In fact there is an easy solution to reduce waste and we can even make something useful out of it.  Composting! Maybe it doesn’t sound appealing at first; you know food scraps, banana peels, dirty napkins….but composting works like magic. Compost is made of organic materials (meaning that they are composed of carbon) and therefore will decompose and eventually, disappear (not quite, but it transforms into soil). To put it more academically: composting is a process in which organic matter is aerobically broken down into water, carbon dioxide, and some residual materials. It is Nature's way of recycling.   When food scraps and paper go to landfill they cannot properly breakdown, because they become buried and eventually run out of oxygen. Instead, they create methane (a potent greenhouse gas that is about 28 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at warming the Earth). After using public transportation and changing ...

Naviguer à 2 heures du matin. Acheter. Utiliser. Oublier. Répéter.  La plupart d'entre nous ont déjà vécu ce cycle où nous achetons impulsivement des choses parce qu'elles sont mignonnes, agréables ou tout simplement à très bon prix. Vous avez dans votre corps ce désir de vouloir quelque chose de nouveau, qui est intensifié par la surprise d'une livraison rapide. Mais... ce sentiment disparaît une fois que vous vous tannez de ce que vous avez acheté. Peut-être que vous êtes déçu parce que ce n'est pas exactement ce que vous vouliez, ou le vêtement n’est plus ajusté après un cycle de lavage. Et pourtant, vous le faites à nouveau. Comme nous passons plus en plus de temps sur l'internet, nous sommes soumis à de nombreuses publicités qui présentent constamment des produits et des offres spéciales, telles que : « 50% de rabais exclusivement aujourd'hui + livraison gratuite ». Parfois, nous succombons - nous sommes seulement humains après tout et aucun d'entre nou...

Browse at 2 am. Buy. Use. Forget about it. Repeat. Most of us have been in this cycle where we impulsively buy stuff because it looks cute, nice, or is just a very good deal. You get that rush through your veins of wanting a new thing which intensifies with the surprise of fast shipping, you’re excited. But… that feeling disappears once you’re tired of what you bought, or maybe you’re disappointed because it’s not exactly what you wanted. And yet, you do it again.  With more time spent online, we are subject to a lot of ads constantly showing off products and great deals, like those “50% off today only + free shipping”. Sometimes we fall for it, we’re only human after all and none of us is beyond temptation. But It’s important to think about where our hard-earned money is going and ask ourselves "Do I really need this?" Since it’s so easy to shop online, it can be hard to resist. But behind every item there’s the health and welfare of another human being and a cost to the pla...