Re-new

Bio is ready to pick up the pieces and start fresh and green again. With the focus of Jill (our new ideas lady-person), Bio is going to get bigger and better.
OCAD needs a push, so we're getting behind it.

If you would like to get involved with Bio feel free to contact either Jill or myself, as the more involved people are, the more effective our changes become.

So be ready for 07/08, because Bio's back.


Jill : jillmandley @ hotmail .com
Paul : pwilcken @ gmail .com

Steve Jobs' iPhone Announcement

Apple iPhone Demo part 1

This is an edited version of Apple CEO Steve Jobs presentation of the new iPhone at Mac World on Wednesday Jan 10th 2007.

BikeShare petition info from TUCO

Hi, fellow Big.Ideas thinkers!

I am posting the following, which was originally left as a comment by Tuco. If you click on the title of this post, it will take you to the petition that Tuco mentions, and you can sign on line. Go for it -- and thanks, Tuco!

Just heard on the CBC this morning that BikeShare is closing due to lack of funding, but that its staff/volunteers are still convinced that bikesharing is an important idea that could work in our City...

Tuco said:

The link above is to a Canadian cycling petition - it asks the Federal Government to promote cycling as a preferred means of transportation. From the looks of your blog I thought it might strike your fancy.

AND - if you think this is at all something you'd like to help out with, I could email you the .pdf of the paper version which Olivia Chow is presenting to Parliament, get fifteen friends to sign, and then mail it back to me and it'll go to Parliament with all the others! Leave a note on my blog and I'll get back in touch with you.

http://tucorides.blogspot.com

Take care!

New Recycle Bin Awareness Poster

BIO Recycling Bin

What they see is what you get when you use a clear bag!



Bin features:

• Clear bag means safer bin for security reasons
• Sets up in seconds. No parts to assemble or lose.
• Large-Capacity, 45-gallon Bag
• Secure Lock is guaranteed to prevent bag from slipping – even when full
• Colored rims increase visibility and convenience.
• No Heavy Lifting, Bag slides through frame when it’s time to unload.
• Recycled Content!
• Steel frame and stakes = $ 45.00
• color or clear bag = $00.15 each

Around 2 bins to be located in most frequented areas of each floor at OCAD

Drink Container (for use anywhere around the school)



Bin features:

• Attractive and lightweight (weighs less than 6 lbs.)
• Made of 100% recycled plastic
• Easy and quick to assemble; easy to disassemble for storage
• Transparent green so you can see when full; helps eliminate contamination
• Capacity approximately 6 cu. ft. (44 gallons)
• Uses 36" x 56" polyethylene bags/liners
• Size: 21" diameter and 30" deep inside (not including space under the lid); 35" tall with lid on

Cost: $ 7.00 each (around 4 bins to be put in each floor at OCAD)

Contacts for purchase:

Ernie DesLaurier
Acro Foam & Plastics LTD
5705 - 99 Street
Edmonton, Alberta
T6E 3N8 CANADA
TEL: (780) 469-6865 / FAX: (780) 469-9061
email: acrovac@planet.eon.net

Plastic Bags Manufacturing and Packaging Supplies
6234 Bissell Place, Huntington Park, CA 90255.
Phone: (800)750-2247(BAGS)
(323) 585-1111
Email:sales@universalplastic.com

Recyle Poster

RECYCLE PRINT CARTRIDGES

By the end of this term, our groupmates have been interviewed with many people in the school services.

Interview with Lancelot Straun, Manger of the plant operations and security
--By Carrie (C-Carrie, S-Lancelot Straun)

C: How much waste does OCAD produce every week?
S: I can't tell you the exact amount at the moment, but we do provide the Waste Audit on the annual report. It is hard to say that, because it is varied everyday due to if there is an assignment period of the student, then there would be a lot of waste produced in the Studio or workshop, especially during the peak time of assignment and exhibitions.

C: How do you deal with the garbage?
S: We ask different kinds of companies for different sectors for the garbage. We use Turtle Island (recycling), Canadian Waste Management (Garbage), and we also employ some people to do the house keeping, such as clean up and collect the garbage bin and the recycle bin. You know that it cost money to get the garbage offside. As the students do projects with huge amount of materials which aware of products, but after they finished their assignments, there will is a lot of waste left behind. It also cost money to get them away. Especially in March and April, there would be a huge amount of scrap materials produced due to it is the end of the term, and also there is not enough space to store all the stuff, then we have to ask people to clean up all the garbage which would cost money again.

C: How much is the recycling rate?
S: I am not able to tell you that again, because I don't have any correlated materials with me right now. We do request information of the lift rate from the waste management company, and also we are planning to set up a recycling center which would be set up in 5 years hopefully. Then there would be more kinds of materials to be recycled, more space to store the garbage and waste, and also more people would be engaged to this recycle movement. By the time, we can also set up a place for recycle the print cartridges.

C: How many garbage bins and recycle bins in the school?
S: I am not too sure on this question. I can tell you that there were 51 recycling bins in 100, MacCaul St, but we begin to lost blue bins and the lids. At the end of the term, we just realized that there are couples of recycle bins have gone, I think there are some students use them to carry their models away, but I have no idea why the lids have gone. As the price of the bin is going up every year, and it is going to extra charge if we order the lid separately. We started to launch the new designed recycle bins, which are fixed in one place and without the lid, and then no one is going to move them away. We use function languages and posters to promote our new bins, and trying to make clients from it. We use the brown bag to collect the leaves from the park, green garbage bags to recycle the paints, e-mail print outs, and class hand outs.

C: How many empty print cartridges do we produce every week/ month?
And how do you deal with them normally?
S: Regards on this question, I am not in charge in this, but you should probably ask Mark Goffin who is the director of the printing service. Personally, I think more and more people have their own printer in their office is such a waste; they waste the energy, papers, and cartridges as well.

Proposal:
Basically we are having a proposal with an idea of recycling empty print cartridges. The goal we want to achieve is get all the people in OCAD involved into this project to help OCAD to improve its green grade.

1. Normally there are a lot of people do not know how to deal with the empty print cartridges, and they just throw them into the garbage, that would cause pollution in our environment.
2. Therefore, we are thinking to let OCAD to help people to recycle their empty print cartridges. OCAD set up some collection points on campus.
3.Students and staffs can bring their empty cartridges from home to the collection point.
4. The school can help them to recycle the cartridges accompanied with their own empty cartridges.

C: How do you think about this idea? Do you have any comments of it?
S: Yes, I think it's a good idea and also workable. It would be great if the school is able to do this. You know that there is a company you can ask about if they do help campus to recycle the empty print cartridge, or may be they will provide a bin for collecting the cartridges. As OCAD has a long term contract with them, and they are the one to help OCAD to recycle the waste. If they are going to extra for recycling the print cartridges particularly, then tell me how much they going to charge, and we will think about that we will go it or not.

Contact with this person: Roseanne Kool
Turtle Island Recycling Company
Tel: 416-406-2040 (Canada)
1800-224-5325 (International)



Printing Cartridge Recycling Report---------------Campus services interview Group: Tony. Shi

New building third floor printing shop manager: Mark
Shuai Tony .Shi

T: Hello Mark I just want to ask some questions about the printing cartridge recycling.
M: For Sure.

T: How do you commonly recycle the printing cartridge?
M: Generally speaking, I do not have any idea bout the recycling property. This is school’s responsibility. I usually put the trash and cartridge in the recycle bin and school would handle this.

T: Okay, and where is the recycle bin?
M: At the hallway, have you seen the bin before?
T: yes.

T: Did you classify the printing cartridge with paper and other properties?
M: Yes. But I just put them in the bin and that is my job. Basically, I do not have any information about the process of how the campus service solve recycling problem. I put paper in the large bin and put the cartridge in the plastic and glass recycle bin.

T: Is here any specific bin for printing cartridge recycling only?
M: Absolutely no idea. But I don't know any one.

T: But do you know where are the cartridge and paper trash go?
M: The stuff is going to mail office.
M: Mail office is care of the cartridge and paper recycling.

T: Do you pay for the printing cartridge recycling?
M: Me? Not at all. That is the mail room’s responsibility. My job is focus on the students’ printing activities and supplement.

T: Do you know any campus program about the cartridge recycling?
M: Yes. There is. But you better ask the mail office. I think there is nothing necessarily about printing cartridge recycling. Some printing company noticed that if people mail the cartridge box back to the company, they could pay for it. But mostly people they are no interesting to do this. I just put them into the bin. May be mailing office send them to some where else. Because I know the office manager did call the recycling office.

T: I have a group assignment here. We suggest putting a specific recycle bin aim at printing cartridge. As I know it can be refill. So can we suppose to design a bin and put it at the hallway?
M: Up to you. If students will put their cartridge in the bin, you can try this plan.
T: Okay, Thanks

Marlene: New building second floor Mail office manger
Shuai Tony. Shi

T: Hello. Sorry to disturb you. I just want to ask few questions about the printing cartridge recycling matter
ML: Okay.

T: .How do you handle the cartridge recycle?
ML: I call the company named Tecnolaser which is responses on OCAD printing cartridge and paper trash.

T: Do you pay for the company?
ML: Me? No. Personally, I don’t. But OCAD pay the annual fee for them. Monthly payment is more expensive.

T: I have a connection. This is a printing company. They have a service about the printing cards purchase. If you purchase the printing cards from them who will freely recycle the campus printing cartridge and paper. Will you do that?
ML: You know what? I do not pay for this, so it doesn’t matter for me. And I think campus service build trust and credits with the original recycle company. The campus pays yearly, so the company increases the discount year by year. I do not think OCAD is really interesting in your plan. At less, I don’t.

T: Okay. But where does the company mail the cartridge?
ML: Globalization. Yes. The company mail to United States, Europe or somewhere else.

T: Okay. I designed a recycle bin for printing cartridge. I want assist the campus aim at cartridge recycling. The design functional as a bin embrace students’ individual printing cartridge and school’s cartridge. So can I put the bin at printing shop of this office?
ML: Yes. Normally, Students handle the cartridge recycling problem by themselves. We don’t have a program or service just for printing cartridge recycle. The plan is good.
T: Okay and thanks for your help.

BIKESHARE!

For this one big idea project I have thought about how I can create a petition for students to sign to press OCAD to purchase more bike racks for the students who bike. Unfortunately when I got down to thinking about it, I thought that it was not an idea that would push OCAD to buy more. I had contacted Peter Lashko who had clearly stated that there were other issues at OCAD that needed to be address first. Purchasing bike rack did not sound like a top priority.

Peter Lashko’s e-mail responds to me.

Hi Jia-Yi

The architects will tell us where and how many racks will fit onto the
property.

AS for the idea, bike racks, recycling centres, all sorts of items are
repeatedly asked for each year under Furniture & Equipment requests. We
receive possibly one million plus dollars worth of requests and while it
varies from year to year, we only fund about a quarter of it.

Each year different priorities are addressed and taken care of.


I thought that pressing the administration to purchase more bike racks was a idea that can truly benefit students and accommodate more space to encourage others to bike. It was an wonderful idea and I still think that it’s a great idea, just that I don’t think that the petition would be so effective. My new idea came when I was walking to school the day after it snow, a few weeks ago. I was amaze by the number of students who was still biking to school even thought it began snowing. That is when I saw a bike with the sign “BikeShare Program.” The sign was yellow and black and I become curious about it. I decided to investigate and it turned out to be a bike share program in Toronto. BikeShare is a bike lending program launched in 2001 by the Community Bicycle Network, a registered non-profit organization. There are 15 hubs downtown where memebers can take out a bike.






I think that the program is suited for OCAD students because there are hubs all over downtown. The price is very fair considering the price of public transportation.
• $30 student/low income
• $50 regular fee
• $75 supporter (name a BikeShare bike)
If you cannot afford $30, a minimum of 4 hours of volunteer service for any community agency or group will be accepted.

For more information visit

http://communitybicyclenetwork.org/?q=bikeshare

This is a great program setup and I think OCAD student union should be involved. This is an excellent program and there are very few OCAD students who know about this program. I hope that by posting on our BIO blog, fellow OCAD students will take advantage of the BikeShare program.

These are photographs that i took a day after it began snowing. This is evidence of the importance of bike racks to the life of OCAD students.






Some more reasons as to why we should be cycling



Cycling is a better alternative to using our vehicle that produces pollution in our air

Cycling is a excellent form of excerise in our busy fast pace world

Cycling encourages other Toronto residences to bike, thus creating a greener city.

Self-Assessment of our Big Idea

Our team came together from three other teams: Chad Cutler, Do-Hyung Kim, and Mary McIntyre were considering ideas about building form, materials and orientation; Paul Wilcken was looking at transportation issues around the College; Rachel Lee was investigating ways to ‘green’ the College interior.

As a larger team, we continued to explore these ideas but added a communications component intended to raise the profile of the Big Idea on campus, and to bring it to the attention of College administrators.

Paul developed a wordmark for the class’s ideas: BIO (Big Ideas @ OCAD). He made the wordmark available to everyone in the class, so that all of our print and other materials could be branded and identified as a production of our class.

At the same time, our team developed a communications plan for our four particular ideas. This plan incorporated:

Poster/Postcard – A College-wide postcard campaign to draw attention to our Big Idea, and direct students and staff to the Green OCAD blog. The posters, with a pocket for BIO postcards, were posted on bulletin boards throughout the school.

big.ideas@OCAD Blog – A blog where students, staff, and anyone who receives one of our postcards can go to find out about our Big Idea, read our posts and make comments. The blog and comments were printed out and presented to Peter Caldwell, Vice-President, Administration, as a kind of petition showing student support for our Big Idea.

Student Forum Presentations – We presented our Big Ideas at the Faculty of Design Student Forum in mid-November, and at a Student Forum meeting with President Sara Diamond on 30 November.

Presentation to Administration – We presented a Proposal summarizing our Big Ideas to Peter Caldwell, and to President Sara Diamond

Our team responsibilities were as follows:

Chad: research on planted roof, Proposal presenter to Peter Caldwell
Rachel: research on interior green initiative; poster+postcard designer/producer
Do-Hyung: research on window replacement
Paul: research on encouraging use of mass transit; BIO ID Guru, co-presenter to Student Forum
Mary: Final Proposal editor/writer; Blog Mistress; co-Presenter to Student Forum, Sara Diamond

SELF-EVALUATION OF THE PROJECT - here are some of our thoughts on the Big Idea process:

Chad Cutler
Basically, I feel like we got quite a bit accomplished, even though we probably won't see the effects of it before we graduate. However, the administration is seriously starting to think about sustainability, and creating a more green place for learning.
If it's all we could do to get them to think hard about interior plants and green roofs and such, then I'd say that's a pretty big step, so we were more or less successful in this whole thing... maybe not in what we originally set out to do, but we still took THAT as far as we possibly could, and seriously made the administration think.

Rachel Lee:
From working on this project, The One Big Idea, I learned a lot. I got to know everything about the school, from the building itself to the relationships of the faculty and students. To me, OCAD was only a place for me to come and study, but One Big Idea made me change my views. Now, I see OCAD as a person who needs help. It may sound funny, but this is what I really think now.

Lots of work needs to be done, not just to improve green-ness, but to improve communication as well. If you think about it, OCAD really doesn’t have any green features, and no one knows where the funds would come from to create them. However, I really think that if faculty and students could just sit down talk about this problem, together we could find many solutions. We could solve the green problem and the communication problem at the same time.

Everywhere I walk in school now, my brain just kicks me back to BIO and other students’ idea as well, it’s just crazy! Green roof?! What the heck is a green roof?! If it wasn’t for this project, I guess I wouldn’t know what’s a green roof is, and what good it brings.

Me, I’m not a green person at all! My life is surrounded by everything that’s not green: cars, gas, plastic, packaging, printing, magazine, garbage! Working on this project, or should I say, this whole course, changed my life, my views toward green. Even my boyfriend named me, “Ms. Green", since I actually do watch what I do, what I eat, what I buy, what I consume; and now I make a lot of comments based on green ideas.

Mary McIntyre:
I came into this class with a very hazy idea of what a “Creative Think Tank” could be, and a lot of concerns about working as a group with people whose frame of reference was (I thought) very different from my own.

The various Assignments pushed me to think about the impact of my decisions – as a creative person, as a member of society at large, and as a member of the OCAD community. Researching the One Big Idea with the rest of my group took me into areas I wasn’t expecting to go: organizing group work, making presentations to the Student Forum, editing a Proposal to the Vice-President, working with fellow team members on a Powerpoint in a Tim Horton’s at 12:30 at night…

I am used to thinking of my OCAD studies as something separate from my working life – my alter ego/secret identity. However, bringing into the classroom what I have learned professionally turned out to be another unexpectedly satisfying result of the Creative Think Tank class.

I agree with Rachel – now that I have started looking at life through the prism of sustainability, I find that I am reevaluating all my decisions about consumption, and my creative practice.

Paul Wilcken:
With the start of green-focused projects, I knew it was something important to me in my life. Working with sustainable ideas opens up so many possibilities of design that I try to think and incorporate them when I can.

After grading OCAD, I really got a feel for how many great ideas there are, but how many are actually implemented; it's easier to say than do. With this in mind I aimed to make the biggest impact that I could, and that we could as a class with great ideas. This is why I put the effort in building BIO; I felt that it would truly make quite the difference. Sustainable is a great way to live and design, and I plan on carrying those ideas along with me.

But along the journey with BIO I have come to realize that with all of the people with influence, that doesn't mean it's good for the general group. Opportunistic people have great ideas, but remember they always have an agenda that comes ahead of everything else. It is why we need to build and structure more balance and more sustainable relationships to truly make things happen. If we design together, it will be accomplished; so many minds, and so many good ideas are just waiting for the push to the next step and I hope I can be a part of those ideas.

City and Inaccurate Information

After we found out that the city had provided us with inaccurate information I e-mailed Janice Wood, who had provided me with the information. Below is the letter I sent her and her reponse.

This message is for Janice Wood,
I am not sure if you remember but I wrote you an e-mail not too long ago regarding the AGO and a piece of land they are using as a parking lot. You responsed to my questions and told me that the City sold the AGO a portion of land on July 21, 2005. We used this information in our blog and used it for a petition we were creating. It seems that you have provided us with inaccurate information. We were contacted by AGO administration saying that this was completely false and infact The AGO did not purchase this land from the City in 2005. The AGO has owned this land since 1911; it was bequeathed to the Gallery by Harriette Boulton. I am not sure why this inaccuracy happened maybe it was a misunderstanding in the questions I provided you with but it has caused us problems in our research and for our project, as the AGO were not pleased with this inaccuracy. Thank You again.
-Dominique Patafio

Hello Dominique,

I have contacted Facilities & Real Estate and asked them to verify the information. I will get back to you shortly.

Janice Wood
Information Liaison Officer
Access Toronto / Public Information
City of Toronto

I still have not recieved her follow up response but when I do I will post it.

laptop program

Our suggested conclusions after reviewing the surveys for the laptop program are:

*First, give students the freedom in the choice of brands if the laptop quality meets school’s requirement. To add on, for those who are able to purchase a laptop, it would be more efficient to their learning with the college; however, for those who are not able to, it would be more stressful on the amount of student loan they will be owing after graduating. 

*Second, for students who are in the art program that wants to take on the design course, the suggestion that was being made is that to have a “time-share” laptop program that can lease or rent out laptops.

*Third, concerning the computer lab in the sixth floor, more classes in the lab would encourage the students to recognize and start to identify with the lab as part of their learning area.

This part of my project is based on the information that I gained through my research. According to this research in a typical office building in Eastern Canada, 30, to 40% of energy is consumed by lighting. Commercial and institutional buildings are similar. My following research at school proved this fact as well. From my personal observations I was able to see how much energy we consume by need; also I got a chance to witness how much energy we waste because of negligence.
Before coming up with a solution, as my first step I tried to find out what kind of responsibilities OCAD is taken or planning to take in the future to prevent this waste of energy from lighting. I contacted with plant services and found out what is being done or will be done to save energy from lighting. According to the information I was given;
Lighting at OCAD is retro fitting and OCAD uses energy efficient light bulbs when there is a need for a lighting replacement. These lower wattage light bulbs can save energy up to 15%.
Halogen bulbs, which are energy efficient, are also being used at OCAD. Halogen bulbs use an average of 40% less electricity, and they last two to four times longer then the regular light bulbs.
Fluorescent tubes are commonly used at OCAD. They use 60 to 80 % less energy than incandescent and last 10 to 20 times longer.
It’s very easy to take advantage of daylight to save energy at OCAD since all OCAD buildings has big, wide windows.
Motion sensor lighting system is one of the best way to save energy for buildings like OCAD but unfortunately because of the tight construction budged this system is not being used at OCAD.
Plant services also gave me information about further plans to save energy which is educating users but no plans has been considered yet.
Education of user was a good starting point for me. I wanted to come up with an idea gets people’s attention and get them act immediately. I also aimed to get this part of the project done with no cost. Eventually I created this warning label that approaches the topic with a sense of humor, I believe it will be strong enough to get attention and make users consider about energy savings and act.
I will be placing the poster on the doors in classrooms and washrooms so that people see the warning label before they step out. The person who steps out last sees the this warning label and goes back to the light switch to turn the lights off since it’s not needed anymore.

Here is our poster for encourage people to rececle the print cartridegs.

We also considered that if our original proposal is not approved, which means OCAD is not interesting in any of our suggestions, and then we are going to design an poster to encourage people to recycle their print cartridges for charity. We have found some websites on the internet about recycle print cartridges for charity, which we think is also a great idea. We are not only recycle the print cartridges which would improve our environment, but also able to help the charity.

The process of recycling the print cartridges is very easy. These are two organizations of them as below:
(Information from the website: http://www.recyclingforcharities.com/.
http://www.worldlandtrust.org/supporting/cartridges.htm)

Five Good Reasons To Recycle

1. Recycling conserves our valuable natural resources.
2. Recycling saves energy.
3. Recycling saves clean air and clean water.
4. Recycling saves landfill space.
5. Recycling can save money and create jobs.

Recycling Facts

Each ton of recycled paper can save 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, three cubic yards of landfill space, 4,000 kilowatts of energy and 7,000 gallons of water!

Americans use more than 67 million tons of paper per year, or about 580 pounds per person.

Paper products make up the largest part (approximately 40 percent) of our trash.

Making recycled paper instead of new paper uses 64 percent less energy and uses 58 percent less water.

Every day American businesses generate enough paper to circle the earth 20 times !

Every day Americans recover more than 2 million pounds of paper! That's about 40 percent of the paper we use.

Paper products use up at least 35 percent of the world's annual commercial wood harvest.

The highest point in Ohio is said to be "Mount Rumpke," which is a "mountain" made up of trash -- at a sanitary landfill! Rumpke is one of the nation's largest waste and recycling companies.

One tree can filter up to 60 pounds of pollutants from the air each year.

Each year, Americans throw away 25 trillion Styrofoam cups.

In Britain, over 9 million "nappies" or disposable diapers, are used every day.

More than 1/3 of all fiber used to make paper comes from recycled paper.

Every Sunday, Americans waste 90 percent of recyclable newspapers. This wastes 500,000 trees!

A new landfill generally costs more than an old one that has filled up. This is because it typically costs more to comply with new environmental regulations, to buy the land, to construct the landfill and to transport waste because new landfills generally are farther away than older ones.

Every year more than 900 million trees are cut down to provide raw materials for American paper and pulp mills.

Only 1 percent of the world's water supply is usable; 97 percent is in the ocean and 2 percent is frozen.

Make Art!!!

THIS POST PUBLISHED ON BEHALF OF CREATIVE THINK-TANK MEMBER OSCAR PATZEN

Vandalism.

It’s occurring more and more in less-trafficked areas of the building. We are putting forward an intiative that will try to slow down acts of vandalism, and put more and more artwork around the school.

Create something we will be willing to pause and appreciate. We are asking artists to come forward and propose artwork you have been holding back simply because the space was not available. Any medium, shape or form -- take advantage! The process is listed below and as stated, no offensive artwork will be reviewed or tolerated.

Students must submit proposals for installations to the Campus Services & Security and Facilities Planning & Management department. Forms are available in Campus Services & Security and Facilities Planning & Management department at 11 McCaul Street, Level One, or can be downloaded from this site.

OCAD is fairly compliant to installation. However, not all areas of the university are available for installation. It all depends on the work in mind. All submission are reviewed by both Directors, Campus Services & Security and Facilities Planning & Management department.

- All submission are judged by a case-by-case submission
- Work should be judged by Faculty staff
(not Campus Services, Security, or Facilities Planning & Management)
- Content should not offend any group or race
- Installation should confirm with the provisions
of the Building Code and Fire Code

Art Installation application forms

Click 'n' drag -- Get your paint on!!