University of Victoria (Canada) Sustainability Project

Type: Policy

Status: Adopted

Source File: http://uvsp.uvic.ca/history/

Description:

Our Vision
The University of Victoria leading the development of our region into a healthy and sustainable community.

Our Goals
On behalf of our membership, we will achieve our vision by turning theory into practice through advocacy, negotiation, and activism. Through this, the UVSP will:

• Be a catalyst for self-organizing activism.
• Be a centre for knowledge and dialogue.
• Be strongly networked with our university, community, and region.
• Be an organization that models sustainability in our own design through transparency and self-critique.
• Provide an opportunity for students to effectively develop and run a non-profit organization.
• Have a visible and engaged presence at the university and in the region.
• Monitor the administration's progress in achieving its sustainability goals.
• Encourage a diverse, safe, and inclusive environment.

Our Mission and Purposes

• To build a more cohesive university community that works together to address issues of concern and importance regarding the sustainability of our institution and community.
• To foster a campus that embodies state of the art sustainability initiatives
• To create a climate for innovative thinking around campus operations, functions and activities
• To promote planning and decision-making that foster ethical and environmental responsibility and accountability.

Campaigns & Projects

Restoration Action Group
The Restoration group does the great get-your-hands-dirty work of building a more sustainable world. Regular work parties are organized for various restoration projects.

Common Energy
The need for rapid organizing of our society to head off the threat of catastrophic climate change is becoming more and more obvious. To that end, the UVSP thinks the university has a uniquely powerful role to play. Right now we're organizing a campaign to make UVic a leader in the struggle to reduce our impact on climate and promote a post-carbon future. We think UVic can go Beyond Climate Neutral - doing more to solve the climate crisis than it does to cause it.

Sustainable Paper Action Group
The primary goals of this group are to reduce consumption of paper on our campus and to have more paper with a greater percentage of recycled content available at our university. The achievement of the former goal, through methods such as increased double-sided printing, will free funds to make the realization of the latter goal more economically feasible. Through our campaign in 2006 we have largely achieved the goal of persuading the university to adopt manual double-sided printing.

Up until the spring of 2005, approximately 70 per cent of the paper on campus was 30 per cent post consumer waste (pcw), and 30 per cent pf the paper on campus was 100 per cent virgin fibre. In the spring of 2005, UVic Purchasing Services changed its purchasing practices and replaced 100 per cent virgin fibre paper with 30 per cent pcw paper - kudos to our university!

We can still do better - other universities exclusively use 100% pcw recycled paper and have default double-sided printing. Together, we make this happen here at UVic.

Food University Network
This is a new initiative for the UVSP that looks at the unsustainable nature of the food that we are consuming and the potential for the university to be a leader in the food sustainability issues in this region.

It’s an exciting time for FUN with several initiatives already coming to fruition, and many more ready to sprout. We’ve partnered with Share Organics to offer a pocket market with organic and as local-as-season-will-allow food on campus to students every Thursday outside the Student Union Building starting at 2:30.

The Network is also working to establish cooking classes and workshops to introduce newcomers to the exciting world of local, organic nutritional choices.

Campus Sustainability Assessment Framework (CSAF)
Click on to our Sustainability Assessment page for more information on this project.

SPOKES bicycling program