BY CHRISTINA-MARY PIPER
Wai Chu Cheng, the sustainability coordinator at Sheridan College was recently featured in the April issue of Canadian Living. It names Cheng as one of 10 Canadians who work to make the world a cleaner, greener place. It mentions in the article that through the Repair Café events that she organizes that more than 2,600 items have been saved from being tossed in landfills.
Cheng was born in Hong Kong. She came to Canada in 2001 as a student. The first time Cheng came to Canada she came to do her Masters of Education at Lake Head University in Thunder Bay. After graduating Lake Head, she returned to Hong Long and later decided to come back to Canada in 2003 and do more studies, but this time at York University where she did her Masters in environmental studies. Now Cheng is working at Sheridan as a sustainability coordinator.
Prior to working at Sheridan, Cheng worked for Toronto and Region Conservation for the Living City (TRCA) for six years as an education coordinator. Cheng also traveled to different colleges and spoke about global wellness as a part time job.
One of Cheng’s passions in life is the repair café. “I love doing it and talking to people about the Repair Cafe,” Cheng said.
She loves and enjoys the outdoors, traveling, running, hiking, all things that involve nature.
Cheng hopes that her work at Sheridan will influence the college to become a zero waste campus. She wants to see people start thinking about repairing things rather than throwing them away. “In the near future I hope to see people not throw things out,” Cheng said. She would like to see people at Sheridan starting to use the zero waste facilities available to them, get more people involved with her initiatives.
One of Cheng’s most gratifying moments at Sheridan was when they restored the garden last summer at Sheridan. “Everybody worked together to organize and get this done, I was really happy,” Cheng said.
“Realize that individually we can make a difference when we put our minds together we can work out better ways of becoming a more sustainable place,” said Cheng.
