Living Planet @ Campus Success Stories

“Designing for Change” was beyond a hackaton for me, it was a brilliant learning experience. Getting the first place with Humber’s Sustainability Team was a truly unforgettable moment!

Our team envisioned an app to connect homeowners, renters, low socio-economic families together to find suitable housing in the city. The app’s algorithm matches people to the appropriate tools to find housing, much like a dating app matching system.We came up with the ‘live-co’ app idea by thinking that it would leverage the concept of living together with others and enhances using less space by sharing places.

During ideation phase, we asked ourselves the design question: “How might we find a solution for growing urbanization and global density and how we can change behaviours?” We went back to old habits and co-living culture. My grandparents used to live in a village where 3 families share one house and all children grow together. This concept ensures sharing of childcare and security. Moreover, this system enhances the mental health by minimizing feeling of loneliness.

We looked at sharing economies as signals for possibility for such a concept. Even though the main reason for using “live.co” would be to decrease expenses, sharing houses would decrease carbon footprint of individuals by sharing energy resources. Finally, we thought that this solution would create a culture and behaviour change, disrupting the idea of individuality, allowing people to adopt sustainability.

I highly recommend this challenge to all students as it is a great opportunity to practice design thinking, ideation, collaboration and presentation skills. It is also an incredible feeling to be a part of WWF and working for a solution that might change the world!

Leading Students for Sustainability together in the 2017-2018 school year, Calvin and I had the idea to somehow obtain and steward an apiary for the Fleming College Frost Campus.

The project was initially brought to our attention (the Students for Sustainability – SFS) by staff members at the college from the Office of Sustainability. Instantly, we knew we wanted to work towards accomplishing this. The more we sat down and hashed out details and potentials, the more excited we became at the thought that Fleming College might very well get its own apiary.

The incredible staff members at Fleming who spearheaded this initiative accomplished a great deal of work. They figured out the logistics, legalities, and purchasing. The SFS with its incredible team of volunteers contributed by fundraising to contribute towards purchase. The SFS team worked to promote the project, educated students, and spread awareness about the current situation of decline in pollinators.

With an incredibly successful fundraising campaign and assistance from the WWF Go Wild School Grants, we were able to raise over $1000! All funds were used directly to purchase the bees, hives, and all necessary equipment.

Currently, there are two hives located on campus beside the local community garden. The bees will undoubtedly serve an irreplaceable role within the local environment and community as they will help to pollinate local wildflowers, vegetables, fruits, crops, and many other plants.

In time, the Frost Campus Apiary will serve as an integral component to campus and community education by raising awareness about pollinator and honeybee decline and critical role in biodiversity and food security. Applied learning in beekeeping can be achieved through on campus workshops for students, events and curriculum linked activities. This apiary can prove to be an integral stimulus for applied research to better understand the dynamics between bee ecology, the natural environment and public health.

Calvin Swan, Environmental Technician 2018, Health, Safety, and Environmental Compliance 2019, Fleming College
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Adam Alaimo, Environmental Technician 2018, Environmental Technology 2019, Fleming College

Centennial College and its Environmental Student Society first started working with the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup in 2005. Since then, we have continued our participation every fall in conjunction with a planting activity in the Local Highland Creek Watershed.

The cleanup is a great campus engagement event with 200 to 300 volunteers signing up to help each year.  Since 2005 over 3800 students, graduates, staff, faculty, families and community members, have joined together to celebrate the health of our waterways! In 2016 to mark Centennial’s 50th anniversary, we incorporated the cleanup into our Paint the Town Green initiative at all of our Canadian and International Campuses, inspiring over 10,000 students, staff and faculty to collect over 5,000 KG of litter – all in one day. Our event was recognized in letters of congratulations from John Nightingale, David Miller and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

We applaud the Great Canadian Shore Line Cleanup program and the work that we can do together with students to help nature in our school and surrounding communities.

The Great Canadian Shoreline Clean Up was Fleming College’s first major experience with the Living Planet @ Campus Program and WWF-Canada; this experience was nothing short of incredible as the staff from WWF-Canada assisted the Office of Sustainability in planning the clean up every step of the way. Fleming College received many compliments from the staff, students and community members about how nice it was to see the College participate in a shoreline clean-up of a local Peterborough Park. The first year was a great success for the college having over 80 participants cleaning up the lake; moving forward with our second year Fleming College looks forward to seeing it grow.

My e-waste event at HP Canada during my co-op made it easy for colleagues to recycle their electronic waste and save valuable materials for reuse in new products. This experience improved my leadership and event planning skills and now I can make sure that electronics are properly recycled wherever I work.

Designing Change is not simply a competition to test your abilities, but it also gives you the chance to experience what it feels like to be brainstorming and presenting an idea under pressure. The competition values teamwork, fresh ideas, and networking. It gave students the chance to interact with many industry professionals, ranging from WWF workers to marketing professionals. I would highly recommend students to enter the competition because this is a great learning opportunity and chance to learn from others. One of the main things that I felt like I have gained the most from this competition is the importance of networking. As a second year student, initially I did not have the courage to approach others, but after practicing with these industry professionals and higher year students, I was given the opportunity to develop a skill that could really benefit me in the future. I really want to thank WWF for this opportunity and highly recommend students to join because it is worth it!

Had a great time collaborating with peers interested in sustainability. We took a holistic look at an important issue and delivered recommendations to industry leaders that were well received. Thank you so much for the opportunity to collaborate for a better world!

WWF’s Designing Change For a Living Planet 2018 was an incredible event put on by caring and dedicated volunteers that consisted of WWF-Canada staff, academic institutions and other organizations. This event challenges individuals to not only think outside the box and disrupt the norm but to redefine societal norms as they currently exist for a better future.

Often for students new and coming close to graduation, can feel as all the school projects or side projects they worked on didn’t provide the experience they need going into the working world or impact many seek for changing the world. WWF Designing Change for a Living Planet was an amazing experience that offered me both. Not only was I able to represent my college with various other students from other programs I was able to see how other schools and students tackle the same problem with a different perspective. If you are looking to put yourself out there a bit more, or to challenge yourself with a real-world problem with people outside of your normal school circles this event would be perfect for you.

For the Design Challenge, my experience was a pretty phenomenal and exhilarating one. The rush of competing filled me to the brim but the fun was what tipped me over. Just working with my diverse team and hearing their ideas was inspiring. What I learned was nothing that can be learned in a classroom because of how different the environment and the experience is. I would definitely recommend this event to anyone who is overall interested in making a change in their lives and in the environment regardless of their field of expertise, because the impact is so big that it will change how you think about, see and do things even in your personal life… at least that’s what it did for me.