I am. Are you? Is your wallet? A common immediate response to how to solve issues of environmental damages, poor animal treatment, and unhealthy food in the food industry is to focus on concerted individual (often read: consumer) efforts to make change. The idea that (and this is a direct paraphrase from the movie) your vote is your dollar. You tell the food industry that you want organic, good for you food, it will happen. I saw the documentary Food, Inc at the Bytowne Cinema. I quite enjoyed it. I found it to have a lot of useful information and even be relatively accessible to folks who may not know much about the food industry. It was pretty graphic at times, which is effective and necessary however it obviously turns some stomachs. Let’s think about this. There is something wrong with the food industry. Most can agree with this, no matter which side you are coming from. It is efficient in ways, but very inefficient in others. There is overproduction, increased risk ...

So the Katimavikers are back in town, and not a minute too late! For all of you who don’t know about the program, Katimavik is a national program that teaches youth a valuable lesson about life, the universe, and everything. Follow this link for a much better description than mine. Now this is the third year that Katimavik will be working with the Office of Campus Sustainability. I will be the first to admit that I perpetuate the myth of the Katimaslave (esclavavik pour les francophones). Really! I have them come in every day and work like dogs for basically no pay. And of course this blog is about demystifying things… so here goes. It isn’t actually easy keeping Katimavik participants motivated (that’s their real titles but sometimes I just give up and call them parts). Think about it, if you weren’t getting paid, what could I possibly offer to get you to do some back-breaking labour? Especially if some of the things we have them do is pretty monotonous. So the solution??? W...

The University of Ottawa is and has been a very green campus for many years; perhaps even since its inception. You don’t have to take this fact completely on faith, I promise to lay out my argument for this in future blogs, but for now let’s assume that uOttawa is one of the greenest institutions in North America. This begs the question; if we are so green why is it that no one knows this? The answer unfortunately is complicated, but I will do my best to keep it simple. I have actually mentioned this problem in previous posts but the University of Ottawa’s green initiatives are almost all invisible. Allow me to illustrate; the University employs a district heating system which means that there are pipes under the campus that shares the heat between buildings. Not exactly the kind of thing you would notice while strolling around outside. So the name of the game is to make the invisible... visible. Tricky, I know. But fear not, we here at the office have been dreaming up tonnes o...

Un taux de réacheminement de déchets de 60 % pour l’Université? Pas de problème! Avec notre nouveau système de compost incroyable, nous l’avons dans le sac! À partir du mercredi 2 septembre 2009, si vous mangez au Café Nostalgica sur campus, tous vos restes de nourriture sur vos assiettes seront compostés. De plus, depuis que le café a reçut son récipient pour la collecte de leur compost, ils peuvent composter tous les restes de cuisine et les serviettes. Ils nous aident à atteindre notre objectif en compostant tous leurs restes de nourriture, serviettes, et verres compostables. Merci Café Nostalgica! -brigitte

I’ve got the level with you, this is one of the most exciting projects that I’ve worked on in the history of ever. Let me lay down some context. Every year the University of Ottawa sends 500 students abroad to study in foreign and exotic places. Some people go to the States, some go to Australia. The one thing they all have in common... air travel. So air-travel is bad. I hope that I am not shocking you with any big revelation here. Air travel is simply the highest form of energy use for travel (except maybe over really long distances but let’s save that conversation for another day). The International Office, the campus’ study abroad coordinators, have come up with a bold concept. They want to offset those emissions. I can’t tell you how much my body was tingling when they told me this. Arguments aside about CO2 as a global warming agent, I thought that this idea was simply revolutionary. Why you ask? Because it forces people to recognize that their travel comes at a cost to the envir...

Hey, did you see the demolition of the Child Studies building? That building beside the Vanier Building? Well if you didn’t see it you can see the hole in the ground that was left behind. Now in case you wanted to know a little bit about how green buildings make a difference you are about to get your wish. You may or may not know but the new Social Science Tower that is going into the place of the old Child Studies Building is going to be LEED certified. Fun fact number 2, if you want to have a LEED certified building than you have to demolish the old building in an environmentally friendly manner. So when the old building was being knocked down there was a series of environmental measures that had to be implemented. The two most notable ones were the dust control measures and the material recycling. Dust control was a nice touch and actually kind of funny to watch. It consisted of having someone using a big hose to spray water on all of the pieces of the building as it was being knock...