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Sustainability: Buildings and Green Spaces

Bushes and trees in the Husky Courtyard

Facilities and its Office of Campus Sustainability strive to create a sustainable campus by delivering new green spaces and energy-efficient buildings.

Targets

Increase the amount of functional indoor and outdoor green spaces and establish a minimum LEED Silver Certification for new buildings exceeding 100,000 square feet.

What is LEED?

LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. LEED certification, the international mark of excellence for green building, provides independent, third-party verification that a building was designed and built using strategies aimed at achieving high performance in key areas of human and environmental health:

  • sustainable site development
  • water savings
  • energy efficiency
  • materials selection
  • indoor environmental quality

Green Facilities

A Plan to Green the Campus

One of the “big moves” identified in Facilities’ Campus Master Plan, our framework for the evolution of the University, is to green it.  

More trees and landscaped open spaces will soften the built environment and create a more attractive campus; provide places for relaxation, gathering and learning; help to manage stormwater and mitigate the impacts of climate change; and generally support a healthy campus and healthy lifestyles. New landscaping initiatives implemented with every new development or renovation will ensure that the character and experience of the campus is gradually enhanced and extended to all areas of the campus.

A number of other landscape projects have been identified in the Plan, some of them to be implemented on their own and others associated with new buildings or infrastructure.

Green Armature

A map of future open green spaces

Green Spaces

Community Gardens
Our community garden program has been active for 8 years and now holds over 50 plots. Community garden plots are offered on a first come, first serve basis. To reserve a plot contact the Office of Campus Sustainability's community garden coordinator. Visit the community garden page for more information.

Living Wall
The FSS Building houses one of North America’s largest biofilter walls. Our six story living wall is made up of 2000 plants of 12 different species. The biofilter living wall reduces the amount of air intake and lowers heating and cooling costs. The unit can even render the building’s humidifier unnecessary and lower concentrations of dust, fungal spores, and airborne bacteria as well.

Husky courtyard
Hidden In the centre of the Biosciences complex is the Husky Courtyard, a “living classroom” that simulates a boreal forest and wetland environment.

Green Roofs 
The University of Ottawa has six buildings with green roofs. These roofs help reduce stormwater run-off, cool down buildings, and provide shelter for animals and insects. Green roofs also help reduce the urban heat island effect.

  • Colonel By 
  • Henderson residence 
  • Learning Crossroads 
  • FSS Building 
  • Montpetit 
  • University Centre 

 

uOttawa STARS Rating

STARS Rating

A grey seal with the STARS logo

uOttawa has a Silver STARS rating from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. STARS, the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System, measures and encourages sustainability in all aspects of higher education; with more than 800 participants in 30 countries, the STARS program is the most widely recognized framework in the world for publicly reporting comprehensive information related to a college or university’s sustainability performance.

Read more about STARS Rating
Energy Retrofits

Energy Retrofits

Since 1974, the University of Ottawa has continuously implemented changes to its infrastructure to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), and energy and water consumption. All of the campus’ infrastructure systems (heating, cooling, electrical, air and water flow, etc.) are routinely monitored and evaluated, allowing us to identify areas where consumption could be reduced by modifying or replacing the existing systems. Projects that reduce a building’s energy consumption by 25% or more are known as “Deep Energy Retrofits” and play a pivotal role in uOttawa’s journey to reducing its GHG emissions by 80% by the end of 2050, as legislated by the Government of Ontario in 2016.

Read more about Energy Retrofits
“We are recycling this building”

When you see this sign in front of a building being deconstructed, it’s that we’re committing to recycle as much of it as possible.

If you observe some of the deconstruction process, you might notice that the building materials are being sorted into large, separate stacks, usually corresponding to the different materials illustrated on the sign: wood, glass, metal, brick, etc. After that preliminary sorting, the materials are then brought off-site and further sorted before being recycled – we hope to recycle upwards of 90% of the materials in these buildings.

 

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uOttawa - Facilities

141 Louis-Pasteur
Ottawa ON K1N 6N5
Canada