As a millennial, I have a guilty passion for Instagram. So, when I started my waste reduction journey, it quickly became one of my main sources of information. To me, waste reduction belonged to the broader minimalist movement. Getting rid of unused stuff, stopping buying things you will not use and reuse what you had seemed tinted with good old common sense. You know, the one our grandparents had?  Even though the aesthetics of owning less seemed appealing to me, I soon fell into a pit of despair as I scrolled though kitchens with matching glass containers neatly stacked in a pristine white background. Every room in the house seemed to follow the same pattern: everything matching in a neat neutral background.  Thinking of taking my reusable water bottle is a real achievement, so attaining the zero-waste home was like walking on the moon. As I kept researching, the very idea of buying containers seemed to defeat the purpose of zero waste in the first place. Why would I buy stu...

Étant une milléniale, j'ai une passion coupable pour Instagram. Alors, lorsque j'ai commencé mon parcours de réduction des déchets, c’est rapidement devenu l'une de mes principales sources d'information. Pour moi, la réduction des déchets appartenait au mouvement plus large du minimaliste. Se débarrasser des choses inutilisées, arrêter d'acheter des choses qu’on n'utilisera pas et réutiliser ce que nous avons déjà me semblait teinté de gros bon sens. Vous savez, celui qu'avaient nos grands-parents ?   Même si l'esthétique de posséder moins me semblait séduisante, je suis vite tombée dans un gouffre de désespoir en faisant défiler les cuisines où les récipients en verre assortis se trouvaient soigneusement disposés sur un fond blanc immaculé. Toutes les pièces de la maison semblaient suivre le même schéma : tout était assorti sur un fond neutre et net. Penser à prendre ma bouteille d'eau réutilisable relève de l’exploit, alors atteindre une maison zér...

When news finally settled and it was determined that uOttawa, along with every other institution in Canada, was going to close its doors for an entire academic season, there were a lot of projects that were still ongoing. Fast forward to almost two years later and people are starting to come back to the campus, and those projects were completed. So let's take a quick tour of some of the sustainability things that happened on campus while you were gone! UCU Park Just behind the UCU (near the Pivik entrance) the land has been completely landscaped and a new park was created. The small park is a 4-season park with seating, a stone dust path, and a bunch of Indigenous, native, and edible plants. If you are in the garden at just the right time of the year, you can see the wild raspberries! Other improvements include a safer declined path to the building and an expanded terrace near the entrance doors (the former smokers pit) with a new seating area. Morisset Window Mural Safe Wings wor...

Il est difficile de décider par où commencer, mais je pense que la meilleure façon de commencer est de dire que tout ce projet a commencé sur Instagram (je parie que vous n'entendez pas cela très souvent !)... Il y a environ un an, je faisais défiler ma page, aimant des posts à gauche et à droite comme nous le faisons tous, lorsque je suis tombée sur une publicité concernant un nouveau programme que la World Wildlife Fund (WWF) avait mis en place pour les étudiants universitaires/postsecondaires. L'annonce a attiré mon attention et je me suis dit : "Pourquoi ne pas aller voir ?" J'avais un peu de temps libre et quel mal cela pouvait-il faire ? L'annonce ressemblait un peu à ceci (voir ci-dessous) et j'ai pensé que cela pourrait être un excellent ajout à mon CV en pleine expansion, me permettant de m'impliquer davantage dans ma communauté universitaire. J'ai regardé le contenu, j'ai décidé "Hé, je peux le faire !" et je me suis inscri...

It’s hard to decide where to begin, but I think the best way to start is by saying that this whole project began on Instagram (I bet you don’t hear that very often!)… About a year ago I was scrolling through my page, liking posts left and right as we all do, when I came across an advertisement about a new program that the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) had put out for university/post-secondary students. It caught my eye and I decided “Why not check it out?”, I had some spare time on my hands and what harm could it do? The ad looked a little something like this (see below) and I thought it might be a great addition to my growing resume; allowing me to get further involved in my university community. I looked through the contents, decided “Hey, I can do this!” and signed up right away. When my friends heard about this new initiative, they asked questions like “Why would you do this, it has nothing to do with your program or future career?”, and to that I say: why the heck not? The Living Pla...

I don't think that I need to convince you that birds hitting windows and dying is a bad thing. Bird collisions with buildings is right at the top of the list of bird fatalities ( along with cats ), and with the huge decline of migratory birds in recent years, it makes sense that large institutions do what they can to help reduce collisions. So here is the first problem. There are no vertical transparent surfaces in nature, thus birds are completely unaware that they are about to hit a window. Birds are often confused because they see the reflection of a tree in the window and try to land on the tree. University campuses are usually covered in windows (modern buildings tend to have lots of windows to let in natural light and convey transparency... also they look cool). And, university campuses have a lot of trees. So mix these two things together and you get a lot of reflected trees causing bird collisions. The second problem has to do with the solutions, in that they are expensive....

It appears most are aware that the fashion industry is wasteful, but consumers and corporations are not doing everything they can to help correct this. The entire concept of fashion has been used as a symbol of status for many years. The significance that the fashion industry puts on materiality is toxic to the environment. A 2019 Business Insider article says this industry “produces 10% of all humanity's carbon emissions, is the second-largest consumer of the world's water supply, and pollutes the oceans with microplastics”.  In addition, “85% of all textiles go to the dump each year. And washing some types of clothes sends thousands of bits of plastic into the ocean”.  We cannot put all the blame on the corporations producing the clothing, because we the consumers often look for quantity over quality. With everchanging fashion trends, consumers move towards fast and cheap fashion to keep up. There are many ways we can reduce our environmental footprint as consumers. We can ...

 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...