Avez-vous trop de choses à rapporter avec vous cet été ou vos pantalons ne vous font plus? Parfait! Emportez-nous vos vêtements, coutellerie, vaisselle, etc. usagés pour être réutilisés; à la station «Déposez et Dégagez» du 12 avril au 1er mai. Ces objets peuvent être déposés sur une table à l’entrée de votre résidence (90 U, LBC, THN, HSY), ou dans le bac devant le bureau de la FÉUO (UCU). Tous vos articles seront redistribués soit à la première Gratuiterie pour les étudiants internationaux, ou à plusieurs charités spécifiques en besoin. L’année dernière, nous avons pu protéger 1.7 tonnes métriques d’articles des sites d’enfouissement! Si vous avez des questions ou commentaires, s’il vous plaît contacter Brigitte Morin, Coordonnatrice du Recyclage et diversion de déchets : bmorin@uottawa.ca ou 613.562.5800 x 3997 ***** Do you have too much stuff to bring back with you this summer or your pants no longer fit you? Perfect! Bring us your used clothes, dishes, utensils, etc. to be re-u...

A couple of months ago I blogged about something called Open Green Maps, or if I didn’t I meant to. I am not sure if you are familiar with the Open Map concept but it is really quite simple. Take your standard map of anything and Open Maps allows you to personalize the content on the map. So you can add a picture or a description of a location to the map. Now enter the Open ‘Green’ Map. The first time I ever heard about a Green Map was at a sustainable campuses conference in Vancouver. It turns out that some geography students of Royal Roads College had collected a bunch of coordinates for some of the green characteristics of their campus and then laid those coordinates over top of a campus map. And voila; instant Green Map. But things have gotten a lot easier since those days of collecting individual GPS points and feeding them into a GIS program. We can all thank Google Maps for that. Although Google didn’t invent the concept of an Open Green Map, they certainly have helped bring out...

What is a waste audit? Well my friends, a waste audit is when we organize the collection of all the waste and recycling from a given space (all the bags are labeled by room and waste type i.e. recycling mixed papers room 229), and we evaluate the contents of each bag. Each bag is opened and the items inside are separated by type (mixed papers, waste, etc.) and weighed. With the information noted during the waste audit, we can calculate the contamination rate of each bag, and of the whole building (i.e. the percentage of items which were in the wrong receptacle). We can then study trends in the data; for example, if people are often throwing a specific item in the wrong bin it is perhaps because the bin isn’t labeled properly, or the sings aren’t clear enough. Recently, we completed a waste audit of the entire Fauteux building, and here are the results: 32% of what was found in each bag was considered to be some type of contamination (which is above what is usual for campus buildings…)....

Qu’est-ce qu’une vérification de déchets ? Bien les ami(e)s, une vérification de déchets est lorsqu’on organise la collecte de déchets et recyclage (tout identifié par type et endroit ex. recyclage de papier, comptoir de recyclage devant salle 323) d’un endroit, lors d’une période de temps et que l’on évalue ce qu’il y a à l’intérieur de chaque sac. Chaque sac est ouverts et les articles sont triés et pesés par type (papier, déchets, etc.). Avec toutes les quantités notées nous pouvons calculer le taux de contamination de chaque sac, c'est-à-dire, le pourcentage des articles qui ne devraient pas être dans ce sac (ex. des déchets dans le réceptacle pour le métal/plastique/verre). On peut par la suite étudier les résultats et trouver des tendances ; Si par exemple tout le monde jette un article recyclable en particulier c’est peut-être parce que ce n’est pas bien indiqué sur les affiches ! Récemment, nous avons compléter une vérification de déchets de l’édifice Fauteux en entier, et...

A couple weeks ago we hosted a “No Idea Too Green” event to discuss the designing of a green Student Center. The new Student Center will take a couple of years to build and will be attached to the current Jock Turcot building. This building will be by students and for students, so we can make it whatever we want! At the “No Idea Too Green” event we came up with lots of great ideas of how to make our new Student Center great for both students and the ecology that we are a part of. Ideas ranged from urban aquaculture, to a living wall , to micro wind turbines. Someone even came up with an idea to create a dance floor that will harness the energy of students’ crazy dance moves . Some of the ideas were focused on improving sustainability while enhancing already existent student groups, such as creating a permanent service space for the People’s Republic of Delicious and a kitchen that would be open for anyone to use. Indoor green space could double up as a way to regulate temperatur...

Photo credit: 3s.images.com Well I've never wrote a blog before so excuse the inaccuracies of how I am suppose to come about this. I never thought I would write a blog but within minutes of arriving on the job I stumbled upon the Eco team of Ottawa U mentioning Facebook, Twitter (which I've also never done), and a plethora of other informational vectors. Maybe I should write about my agreed slavery to Jon and Brigitte, or the fact that for the passed 30 minutes I've been taking out stitches one by one of a uOttawa jacket. But all that would be unnecessary banter. Sticking to the facts, my first week has been a blast. Arriving on the scene a little later than normal because of the unforeseen sending home of the last participant, it was my job to be the replacement. Throughout the week I walked around the large campus putting signs on recycle bins, composting for the Protection building which eventually goes into this huge worm pit (actually really interesting!), and other re...