Recipient of the Eric St-Pierre Award

Themes: Energy, Resources & Technology; Waste

Bioplastic is usually made from plants with a high starch content in their roots. My hypothesis is that I can make bioplastic from burdock roots and dahlia roots because they have a high content of inulin (a polysaccaride similar to starch). I chose burdock because it is a widely available invasive plant that grows in urban and rural areas of Quebec. In the future, I could easily harvest the burdock without having to grow it. I chose dahlia flower because I can use the flower to make pigment with which I can dye the bio-plastic thus making it a full circle process.

Recipient of the Eric St-Pierre Award

Themes: Energy, Resources & Technology; Health & Wellbeing

The basic idea of this research project is to figure out the best way to add a generator, converter and inverter to the spin bikes present in the gym, so that as a person uses the bike, the rotation provided by the wheel which yields kinetic energy is transferred to the generator then to the convertor and invertor in order to provide high voltage AC power. As the spin class has 25 bikes which are used on a regular basis on the gym, it may generate enough electricity to light up 3 studio rooms and may even be further stored or directed to power outlets which can act as a source of power to charge up electronic devices at the gym. An alternative to this is that instead of retrofitting the bikes at the gym, we can use the machines which have the system already built in them. These machines are manufactured by a company named SPORTS ART and can be replaced with the old machines.

By retrofitting the bikes, the kinetic energy wasted as one exercises in the gym can be harnessed and used as a source of electricity. This idea has been implemented in certain gyms in the U.S but none in Quebec, making Concordia the first ever human powered gym in the province.

Themes: Community; Social Justice

This research project combines creative work with research to produce a critical future-mapping experience which imagines a potential Montreal. Instead of simply interpreting scientific projections like many climate maps, I will be gathering the thoughts and visions of community members active in Montreal’s Climate Justice movement. In interviewing 5-7 of these organizers, I will ask them what they think climate change and climate action might look like visually in future Montreal. They will paint a picture which is both grounded in past efforts to bring awareness to climate issue, while imagining future positive and negative outcomes.

Themes: Food; Social Justice

This master’s thesis examines the networking capabilities built into the solidarity cooperative model, its potential to mitigate the effects of capital on the social economy, and its emergence within Quebec’s unique socio-political context. A case study of a solidarity cooperative, The Hive Cafe, which operates out of Concordia University in downtown Montreal, is used to analyze the impacts of this model on worker self governance and to extract insights useful to those seeking to build socially-oriented economic alternatives.

Themes: Food; Health & Wellbeing

There is much publicity around “saving the bees,” but this catch phrase is usually applied to honey bees. Wild bee species, and their declining numbers, are less often addressed. This research aims to help conserve wild bee communities on the Island of Montreal, which hosts approximately 180 bee species. My work goes beyond just planting native floral resources, which is what is most often recommended for pollinator conservation. The goal of my work is to assess the underlying mechanisms of the floral community that influence wild bee species richness. This will include analyzing floral nectar quality, blooming periods of flowers, and corolla lengths, and how the composition of these traits in a floral community will shape the bee community.

Recipient of the Eric St-Pierre Award

Themes: Health & Wellbeing, Energy, Resources & Technology

With the growing density of high-rise condo and office towers, The Fine Art’s courtyard has become one of the few green spaces left in the downtown core and on the Concordia campus. Both garden and courtyard are enjoyed by Concordia students, faculty and staff as well as nearby residents. The current construction in the VA courtyard removed most of the green and presents an unique opportunity to rebuild the space so it can realize its ecotherapy potential but also create a living-lab where research data can be gathered to help meet Concordia’s mandate with the CERC for Smart, Sustainable and Resilient Communities and Cities.  The first phase would be to build this green lab using a bottom-up approach involving a systematic user co-creation involving Concordia Students. Our inter-disciplinary team, consisting of Sculpture and Ceramics faculty member and students, would like to create two green eco-therapy areas.

Themes: Community; Energy, Resources & Technology; Waste

“Open-Access” is a multi-phase personal and course-based arts research for the development and diffusion of a series of energy-aware and DIY (Do-it-yourself) waste-repurposing tools centred upon the conceptualization of an organic open-design community driven by emerging sustainable practices. The project itself starts with the idea that the DIY culture, decentralization methods may be a key to sustainable practices for many emerging artists and institutions.

Electric vehicles, whether battery-electric, plug-in hybrids or neighborhood, all have three main problems related to their battery: a low energy density, which translates into low range, a need for long and frequent charging stops and a limited battery life leading to replacements coming in at a very high cost, both monetary and environmentally-wise. CAPSolar therefore aims to solve these problems in order to accelerate the electrification of transports, making this sector more sustainable. Its instrument, Solar Power: CAPSolar currently develops a first-of-its-kind, add-on solar module designed exclusively for Neighbourhood Electric Vehicles (NEVs). It will boost NEVs efficiency by extending their range and battery life, and by offsetting the infamous parasitic current drain NEVs are prone to.

Themes: Energy, Resources & Technology; Education

The objective of this research project is to test a modern biological reactor, with respect to biofilm formation for nitrification and denitrification processes. Hence, the goal was to confirm if sufficient nitrogen removal from wastewater was achieved with a system developed in the Environmental Engineering Laboratory in EV Building at Concordia University.

Themes: Energy, Resources & Technology; Education

The relatively new field of chemistry, green chemistry, embraces and implements the notion of innovating and designing chemical products and processes that seek to mitigate and/or eliminate the use/generation of hazardous substances. The goal of my project is to eliminate the use of a hazardous substance, N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF), in the Howarth research lab (as well as other research labs) in the chemistry department at Concordia by finding a greener alternative.

Themes: Food; Community; Waste

The main purpose of this research project is to provide Concordia-approved caterers, which are all Small-Medium Enterprises (SME’s), a guidance towards sustainability-oriented policies so they can implement processes that benefit the Concordia community and the community at large, while capturing increased financial benefits. This research project involves gathering information in different ways and from different sources with the goal of obtaining a global perspective on how food services work at events run by the Concordia community. This project will provide an understanding of current advantages and areas of improvement, while providing three recommendations addressing three of SAFs sustainability issues: Waste Management, Sustainable Production and Consumption, as well as Community economic developments and alternative business models.

Themes: Community; Education; Waste

Cigarette waste (predominantly butts) has been classified as the single most littered item in the world. Cigarette filters are produced from non-biodegradable plastic which contain up to 7,000 toxic chemicals. These chemicals, making their way into groundwater and waterbodies, have a severe impact on ecosystems. In Montreal, it is estimated that 30% of the litter found on the streets and in public spaces are cigarette butts, which eventually will end up in the runoff and then our waterbodies. The perimeters of Concordia University are not an exception…We believe that our research project  will help bridge the gap between cigarette pollution and Concordia’s sustainability policy and improve our university’s practices in ecological sustainability.

Recipient of the Eric St-Pierre Award

My research-creation project focuses on waste as a phenomenon that can teach us about our human connection with the material world.

Investigating the development of Bio-Material using the natural growth process of mushrooms called Mycelium, I am working on developing art installations that can fit the size of the human body and that are entirely made out of Mycelium. The goal is to create an environment that can demonstrate and advocate for new building materials, that can replace our current access use of plastic and also restore damaged places, such as landfills.

Building on my masters’ research, my research project seeks to explore ways that settlers and non-Indigenous people can engage in meaningful recolonization and decolonization-based processes.

Working with Press Start, a youth-led co-operative arcade located in Bâtiment 7, this community-based research project is looking to explore the needs of youth in respect to making topics pertaining to reconciliation and decolonization accessible, inclusive, relatable and impactful by working with them to co-create educational programming that addresses issues themed by reconciliation and decolonization. This process of co-creating educational programming will be carried out in collaboration with Concordia’s Office of Community Engagement, the Montreal Urban Aboriginal Community Strategy Network and Canadian Roots Exchange.

My research is focused on mapping the political economy of organic waste management in Montreal, Quebec, and identifying the principles under which a more socially, environmentally and economically sustainable waste management strategy might be developed.

I am broadly interested in exposing how the existing approach to waste management privileges a neoliberal capitalist framework that emphasizes large- scale, high-technology, disembedded practices which result in problematic outcomes such as alienation from waste, opposition to composting, contamination of organic waste streams and poor-quality compost which cannot be effectively utilized for organic agriculture.

Recipient of the Eric St-Pierre Award

In the context of my MA research, I am investigating how environmental communication pedagogy and practices inform current environmental education and how including aesthetics of care promotes long-
term environmental advocacy in students. Through my work, I explore how consciousness and critical appreciation around food production and soil health are promoted in order for students to acquire the skills to critically reflect upon the environment as informed individuals who care deeply and act in transformative ways.

Transforming the landscape of the Loyola Campus with attractive edible gardens!

For my thesis in Art Education, I am conducting a case study addressing my main question, “How are studio-based fine arts students learning about sustainable material practices?” A sub-question to this that is just emerging is, “Can professors spend more time on fewer projects and go deeper into sustainability?”.

Although it is not yet clear on how this research will manifest in its final iteration, I believe that, through my research, new possibilities will emerge for best practices and has the potential to create a new FFAR course on sustainability in Fine Arts.

The 2017 Commuter Habits Survey revealed that, while 52% of students lived within 5km of the Sir George William Campus (SGW campus), only 7% of them cycle to school.

This large gap between the potential and actual cycling rates prompted the question: what are the barriers preventing students at Concordia from cycling to Sir George William Campus? Many researchers have attempted to identify barriers that prevent individuals from cycling. Key barriers commonly cited in the literature include safety, weather, distance, scheduling issues, and effort. These barriers, among other factors, have an effect on which mode of transportation is chosen by an individual.

The Sustainable Curriculum Project project looks at sustainability-related
academics within the John Molson School of Business (JMSB). The purpose/goal of this project is to play a role in shifting the academics at JMSB to feature more sustainability-related content. This would take the form of either:

1. Increasing the amount of sustainability-related content in existing JMSB course curriculum or
2. Adding new avenues for educating about sustainability in business practices through means such as courses, Majors, or Minors.

Our project aims to contribute to the reinvigoration of Divest Concordia and enhance solidarity between university fossil fuel divestment groups. Our group is seeking to achieve three main outcomes:

1. Strategizing for Divest Concordia,
2. Contributing to an upcoming high stakes presentation at University Senate, and
3. Creating an interactive map for Canadian Divestment Campaigns to increase solidarity and public presence.

This project looks at gender-neutral French from a queer theory perspective by examining how gender-neutral French works to further the visibility of gender non-conforming and queer people in the French language and how it works to shift cultural conceptions of gender amongst French speakers through its use and surrounding activism.

The three lenses of lived experience, social theory, and visual associations allow for rounded exploration of the relationship between language, visibility, and social acceptance for gender non-conforming, non-binary, queer, and trans identities and aim to increase the ways we access this knowledge and engage with this language as a Concordia community.

Recipient of the Eric St-Pierre Award

The scope of this research is to analyze the effects of humidity and moisture on 3D printing materials. This will help to develop an appropriate system for moisture resistance applications without subjecting the plastic to high temperatures. This system includes a dehydrator, to remove moisture; or a proper humidity free storage system, to prevent moisture from coming into contact with the filament. In order to make 3D printing sustainable, clear methods to recycle plastic filament efficiently is imperative.

There are multiple technologies that produce substantial amounts of plastic waste. With the rise of 3D printing, plastic waste from 3D printed objects has also increased. Despite the large amounts of waste generated, it is possible to repurpose this plastic to prevent it from ending up in a landfill. Our goal is to recover plastic waste from 3D printing by turning it into new filament for future 3D printed projects.

Recipient of the Eric St-Pierre Award

In conjunction Waste Not Want Not, I have gathered data to determine the effectiveness of waste diversion since 2014 ( the year of WNWN’s inception), which will be used in months and years to come to further inform and tailor WNWN education efforts to the needs of the present-day Concordia population.

If an increase in composting effectiveness can be observed between now and 2014, and if this increase stands in sharp contrast to the effectiveness of such practices prior to 2014, then some support would exist for the claim that WNWN’s collaborative ‘Living Lab’ model of lobbying for more sustainable on-campus waste practices is worth exporting to other educational institutions.

Our research project aims to better understand the environmental issues faced by wetlands situated within, or close to an urban environment.

Precisely, we are focusing our research on the Mont-Royal Swamp, a fairly unknown wetland located at the heart of Montreal that sustains many forms of life and biodiversity. In our research we wanted to explore how wetlands located close to urban environments present peculiar environmental challenges but also how our representation of nature impacts the actions taken by individuals or communities towards the natural environment.

Recipient of the Eric St-Pierre Award

The goal of our project is to educate people to consume in a better way. We want to tackle is the management of plastic waste and behaviour of people regarding this. The idea would be to create a workspace in the campus where people would bring their plastic waste. In that workspace we would collect, sort, recycle and create new object out of plastic waste. We want to join the Precious Plastic community and create a dynamic recycling environment at Concordia. Precious Plastic is a community of individuals committed to find new solutions to plastic pollution. All of their inventions, machines and knowledge are available in open source. Our project would be to learn from their expertise, create our workspace and implement a market of recycling-goods in the university.

Recipient of the Eric St-Pierre Award

The goal of this project is to promote solidarity in-between students and working groups affiliated or interested to food growth, food processing, and in general-the food cycle. To improve Concordia’s food waste management by bringing together the waste from The People’s Potato/The Hive as compost along with bringing leftover newspaper carbon sources from The Concordian as our nutrient source for our hard working wormy system drivers.

We will engage interested volunteers in creating a high value vermi-compost that will be used in food production at Concordia’s facilities (City Farm School, Campus Potager, Concordia Greenhouse, etc.) with the idea of having a closed loop food-system that will fortify Concordia’s sustainability goals. We intend to offer social-service hours for credits with professors should they be willing along with self interested volunteers.

Over the last years, there has been an increase in the number of grassroots projects and agencies aiming to mobilize knowledge and awareness on food sustainability issues. Many entities claim that their activities result in community building, resilience, as well as the reduction of the knowledge-to-action gap. Collaborative learning activities can include presentations, open discussions, debates, case studies, reflective practices and hands-on workshops. Nevertheless, there has been limited research on collaborative learning in the context of the sustainability and food movements. Since education has its impact when “learners” can transfer their knowledge to new problems, this research aims to review and categorize different collaborative learning approaches in the context of the sustainability and food movements. Considering the complexity these social movements, the paper will draw on literature from the fields of Education, Community Development, Sociology, Anthropology, and Design. The research includes a study case on Season Jars preservation project, which unlike other community kitchens, cover a variety of topics besides food preparation, including history and cultural heritage, the health benefits of preservation, the biochemistry of food preservation as well as the socio-economic, environmental and food security implications of preserving local, seasonal food.

Entomophagy is the word for humans eating insects. The Entomo Collective is looking to build a culture of sustainability in the Concordia community through an exciting and quickly growing food movement that revolves around edible insects. By producing our own insects and selling them at the Concordia Farmers Market, we will develop an environmentally conscious and affordable protein to share with the Concordia community. Food sovereignty, the notion of being in control of your own food, including– knowing where your food comes from, who made and distributed it, and the methods involved in its creation– is an overarching goal for this project. By making food available to students that we can guarantee was made sustainably by other students and is affordable, we will be able improve food sovereignty and availability on campus. Additionally, we plan on teaching students and others how to farm their own mealworms at home, bringing them even closer to having control over their diet that will ultimately leave a smaller impact on this planet. Insects have been eaten for thousands of years in several countries but has never been successful in contemporary North America. We believe it’s time this sustainable protein reaches Concordia!

This research project is being conducted in Kahnawake, but this is not to say that this project has no benefits to the Concordia community. Students from different faculties (Arts & Science and Engineering) were able to get hands- on experience in the field, something that is not usually offered to students. In April, there will be a presentation, for students and faculty, to share the results from this project, and to reflect on how Concordia students may offer their knowledge and skills as allies in indigenous sovereignty projects. I believe it is important that we recognize that at Concordia, we are on unseeded territories belonging to the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation. They have been displaced, moved around and confined to the small reserve that is now called Kahnawake. I believe that within the framework of reconciliation, organizations such as SAF and institutions such as Concordia should work towards creating and strengthening relationships with indigenous communities. This project is working towards empowering Mohawks from Kahnawake to create a more sustainable lifestyle by helping to understand soil contamination in their garden. Access to safe and healthy locally sourced food is a base for combatting health,social and economic inequalities that stem from Canada’s systematic colonial racism.

Student entrepreneurs are tackling complex social challenges in and around university campuses in the domains of sustainability education, social exclusion and poverty. These enterprising students achieve this through social innovations (SI) – new solutions to social problems that are more effective and sustainable than existing market solutions. Through the vehicle of a social enterprise, which puts social purpose above financial growth, entrepreneurs can develop and implement SIs that benefit their communities. However, due to the focus on social purpose, student entrepreneurs face unique challenges. This applied research seeks to understand these challenges by focusing on two research questions (i) how the student entrepreneurs embed a social mission into their enterprise and (ii) how do they overcome the internal tensions between scaling for social impact and ensuring financial sustainability of their enterprise. The student founders of 10 to 15 social enterprises will be interviewed to shed light on the research questions. This research is expected to have several academic and practical contributions. Academically, it enhances the interdisciplinary study of SI as a phenomenon by delving into SI literature in sociology, community psychology, development studies and management. The key practical outcome is to develop solutions for the challenges faced by participating students.

Recipient of the Eric St-Pierre Award

The world’s population who lives in cities is expected to become 66% by 2050 and this means a huge energy demand! The exacerbating global warming issues and the depleting fossil energy resources are making the need for sustainable energy resources. Photovoltaic energy is one of the most promising sources of clean energy. Since the recent urban developments are mostly happening vertically, there is a considerable potential, especially on the high-rise building facades in addition to the rooftops, for generating PV energy in urban areas. This necessitates a thorough analysis of the outer surfaces of the building in terms of potential solar radiation, especially in large cities where the urban canyon phenomenon exists. However, the existing methods do not discriminate between different types of surfaces of the building and treat the entire envelope as a single surface. Given the fact that the selection of appropriate PV panel depends on the type, material, geometry, and location of these surfaces, this research aims at developing a comprehensive and over-arching PV panel layout planning and optimization that consider various types of panels simultaneously for Concordia campus buildings to maximize the PV energy generation and minimize the total cost.

My project is influenced by this observation: we (Western society) are an over-consuming society, and it has huge negative impacts on Earth and its human and non-human inhabitants. All the objects, appliances, vehicles, clothes, in summary, everything we buy has something in common: the designer(s) behind it. I am a designer. I create furniture and accessories, using reclaimed wood and textiles. My research/project is about design, textiles, sustainability, and ethics. It is also about learning and sharing, and it is supported by three components: a book of fabrics; interviews with Montreal textile designers and professors from academies which offer programs in connection with textile; and a workshop series with Concordia students. My goal is to connect with the ethical textile community of Montreal and its different stakeholders. I strive to improve my expertise for sustainable materials while sharing my knowledge with the Concordia community.

This proposal focuses an experiment in education that aims to blur the boundaries between university and community. The U.lab technology (Scharmer, 2009) is used to explore collective spaces that give rise to social innovation, to make use of online to offline learning pedagogy and to engage deeply in a process that helps all learners to connect with what they most want to bring to the world and to take steps toward that action in a vibrant, supportive learning community. The project aims to increase the visibility of the process and outcomes of the U.lab hub at Concordia University. The project involves a qualitative research study, where students and community members are interviewed to learn more about the impact of the U.lab hub experience, and explore how such model could be further integrated into the university. The results will be presented in academic journals, published in social media channels and presented in introductory workshops that will be offered to the students and members of the community, with the aim of giving an increasing number of students the possibility to be the protagonists of this revolutionary approach education.