Photo from re-char.com Whether or not you’re a fan of free market capitalism, there are a few basic assumptions you are following on a regular basis. You know that money makes the world go ‘round and that the economy is a sometimes volatile but very necessary force in our current system. You don’t have to agree with this. I’m going to try not to give an economics lesson (without my economics texts I’ll probably fudge something ) but I think we can work off a few simple concepts that relate to the environment and how it can react to an economic system that seems, pretty plainly, not to care about it.When a corporation acts, it acts in the interest of capital, and almost never in the interest of the environment. This idea will become a more detailed blog post later. So the title of this entry is Carbon Offsetting. Let’s talk about that. Apparently, this whole economy talk is where things like carbon offsetting come in. As we know, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas which contributes ...

Little by little things do change, even on campus. Indeed the day is coming when there will no longer be any cars on campus at all. The University of Ottawa is slowly but surely becoming a pedestrian campus. You may have noticed that there have been a few new additions to the campus lately, in the form of large square concrete flower beds. The first instinct is to assume that these concrete containers are part of an initiative to keep the campus beautiful, and undeniably you would be right. The planters are filled with wonderfully colourful plants that do serve to beautify the campus... but there is more to them. Emboldened by his new post as University Ground Keeper, Benoit has been working hard to keep the campus beautiful. And one of the ways to accomplish this is to impede the ruin of grass and plants by eliminating the flow of cars that continuously trample them. The concrete planters have been strategically deployed on campus to reduce the movement of cars on campus in pl...

So as we bring this little journey about recycling bins comes to an end it would be foolish of me to not mention all the hidden green elements of our bins. I often find that people respect things more when they know a little something about it. Aside from the basic elements that I discussed about our bins, I want to share some fun tidbits. I called this entry green to the core for a reason. When the bins were being designed my supervisor asked, “What are the bins going to be made out of?” He thought that it was important that if we try to be greener than we should really be greener. The design team agreed and so we specified FSC wood. We also specified that all the glues used be non-toxic. We actually toyed around with the idea of using recycled ceramics for the counter-tops except... it would have added hundreds of dollars to the price of the bins. While designing the bins we asked the good people of sanitary services how we could make these bins so that they would be more helpfully f...

Vous avez sûrement remarqué, lorsque vous faites votre épicerie, les nombreux produits à emballage de couleurs nature avec les noms « vert », « organique » et « biologique ». Il semble que c’est de plus en plus populaire de nos jours. Évidemment, les entreprises ont toujours connus à bien s’adapter aux besoins des consommateurs et les gens ressentent le besoin de protéger leur santé, leur famille et l’environnement. Certains croient pouvoir réaliser ceci en achetant toute une gamme de ces produits « verts ». Cependant, pouvons-nous avoir confiance dans nos achats? TerraChoice a fait une étude fascinante pour identifier les produits qui sont victimes de « lavage vert » ( http://sinsofgreenwashing.org/ ). Selon cette firme de marketing environnementale d’Ottawa, le « lavage vert » est « le fait de tromper les consommateurs à propos des pratiques environnementales d’une entreprise ou des avantages environnementaux d’un produit ou service. » Ainsi, comment pouvons –nous distinguer le bon ...

For this next instalment I am going to focus on yet another form of convenience, one size fits all. The concept of one-stop shopping is nothing new. Why wouldn’t you want to concentrate as many activities as possible into a single functional space? That was the driving principle behind the new recycling centers; one stop shopping for recycling on campus. We really wanted to do this for many reasons; mostly for efficiency of resources and the ability to increase the amount of waste captured. So the goal was to create the most multi-purposed recycling station in one location. This meant that the first thing that we had to do was marry the waste and recycling systems. Two different disposal locations means too many mitigating factors. What if the recycling bin is a little further than the waste bin? What if one of the waste bin gets moved away? Well… people are likely going to put the wrong things in the wrong bins. Now if we squish all the bins into one station, not only do we eliminate ...

L’activité « Déposez et dégagez » est un programme en résidence, où, à la fin de l’année, nous procédons à la collecte d’articles non-voulus des étudiants. Ces articles sont par la suite triés, et envoyés à des organismes en manque de biens matériaux particuliers. Cette année, grâce à l’activité « Déposez et dégagez » nous avons évité de jeter et de gaspiller 1,7 tonnes de vêtements, d’articles de cuisine, de livres, de fournitures de bureau, etc. (objets donnés à des organismes ainsi qu’à la communauté universitaire). Ce chiffre correspond à tout l’acide citrique produit sur la Terre l’année dernière, ou au poids d’un tracteur mini-CAT ! Merci à tous ceux et celles qui nous ont aidés, soit par leur temps, en prêtant de l’espace, ou par un don. Ce ne serait pas possible sans vous ! The “Dump and Run” is a program where, at the end of the year, we collect items that students in residences no longer want. These are then sorted, and donated to specific charities in need of specific items....