Take Action
Reduce Emissions
Get involved with your students' union and help with the Sustainable Campuses initiative on projects including campus sustainability assessments and greenhouse gas inventories.
Take part in local activities or create your own through the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition. Visit their website at: www.ourclimate.ca
Visit the David Suzuki Foundation's website to learn about what you can do to help slow climate change. Visit: www.davidsuzuki.org
Carbon emissions are causing a slow but devastating increase in global temperatures, known as global warming.
Despite this well-proven fact, Canada lags behind most countries in taking concrete steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Government of Canada led by Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper refuses to implement a global treaty to reduce emissions (the "Kyoto Protocol"). Instead of adopting an internationally-recognised plan, the Harper conservatives invented their own cliamate change targets. However, these targets will only get Canada half way to the reductions identified by climate scientists.
Clearly, without commitments to international cooperation from the highest levels of the Canadian government, global warming is guaranteed to get worse.
Reduce Commodification
Learn more about the impacts of bottled water. Visit the Inside the Bottle campaign site at: www.insidethebottle.org
Download the Polaris' Institute Campus Toolkit for the Inside the Bottle campaign at: www.insidethebottle.org/student-action
Learn more about the campaign to protect public water. Visit the Polaris Institute website at: www.polarisinstitute.org
Get involved with the Council of Canadians campaign to stop bulk water exports and to ensure that water is a human right. Visit: www.canadians.org
Visit the David Suzuki Foundation's website to learn about small changes you can make in your own life to make a difference, as well as ways to pressure the federal government into action. Visit: www.davidsuzuki.org/oceans
"Water is essential to life—no one should be able to control it or expropriate it for profit." (Council of Canadians)
Water, like education, is a public right, not a privilege. Like the invasion of commercial values into education, the treatment of water as a commodity that can be sold risks potentially denying access to this life sustaining resource and our common responsibility to ensure that water is used sensibly to minimize negative environmental impacts and guarantee future access to it.
Bottled water is now the fastest growing segment of the entire beverage industry. Beverage exclusivity contracts on campus are the marketing tool of choice for Coca Cola and PepsiCo to guarantee access to the student market. Both Coca Cola's and PepsiCo.'s bottled water brands Dasani and Aquafina (the primary bottled water brands on campuses across Canada) are drawn from municipal tap water.
The Polaris Institute, a leading public advocacy organisation, has launched a new campaign entitled Inside the Bottle. For more information on what you can do to get involved in the fight against privatized water, click on the links below.
Reduce Waste
Even small steps help. Lug around a reusable coffee mug for purchasing hot beverages in. Canadians drink approximately 10.9 billion cups of coffee each year, with most of these in disposable cups!
Support your campus recycling and composting programs! If these don't currently exist on your campus, get involved with your students' union to lobby your institution to develop a program.
Get involved with food services on campus. Talk to your students' union about a campaign to green campus food services.
Take the David Suzuki Nature Challenge to learn ways to reduce your ecological footprint!
Many countries have taken action in support of environmental conservation, and have introduced economic incentives through public policies to discourage waste production. However, according to the David Suzuki Foundation, Canada has lagged far behind in introducing strong regulations or economic measures to protect the environment. Campuses are no different, and many have ignored the huge amounts of waste they produce.
Campuses are microcosms of local and global societies. Government underfunding of universities and colleges has contributed to many ecologically harmful practices on campus, such as wasteful food services. All across the country, private food service providers are creating waste at unbelievable proportions, without an option for reusing or recycling.
So much waste is produced on campus each year that in a 2004 campus sustainability audit at the University of New Brunswick, students found that only 3.9% of the 1500 tonnes of solid waste produced on campus was recycled. The remained went to landfill.