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  1. Green Power Partnership’s 2022 Year in Review

    Associated Project(s): 

     

    The EPA GPP has realeased a 2022 year in review graphic and data. Please see the attached graphic.

    • EPA Partners reported more than 3,000 green power purchases and projects, up 13 percent over the previous year.
    • EPA Partners increasingly engaged directly with new projects through project-specific supply options like PPAs, surpassing retail supply options for the first time in program history.
    • Nearly half of all 687 EPA Partners procured enough green power to meet 100 percent of their total annual domestic electricity demand.
  2. UIUC works with Ecolab to transition to soap concentrate

    Soap waste is especially prevalent on large campuses and facilities that experience high day-to-day foot traffic. Through North American, UIUC's custodial product vendor, the university is transitioning to Ecolab's soap concentrate. This allows soap dispensers to be refilled rather than tossed and replaced with a single-use dispenser. This choice was made in an effort to address waste reduction practices in the Building Services division of F&S.

     

    ***************************************************************************

    From: Dean, Sean <Sean.Dean@ecolab.com>
    Sent: Thursday, January 4, 2024 10:43 AM
    To: Varney, Pete <pvarney@illinois.edu>
    Cc: Walter, Christopher <Christopher.Walter@ecolab.com>; zhansen@na.com
    Subject: Thank you from Ecolab

     

    Hello Pete,

     

    Was a pleasure to meet you yesterday, thank you for the time, especially unannounced!  Look forward to scheduling a formal review once installations are done and your teams have had a chance to acclimate to the concentrated program.  Sending a recent link highlighting a topic from our discussion, environmental responsibility is key guiding principle for all Ecolab businesses.  It’s nice to be recognized for it and perhaps there’s more opportunities for North American, Ecolab, and the University to partner on sustainable initiatives in the future.

     

    Thanks again,

     

    Ecolab Honored for Sustainability Initiatives (cleanlink.com)

    Sean Dean
    Regional AVP Facility Care

    ECOLAB  T 336 207 2732  E sean.dean@ecolab.com

  3. Winners of the 2023 Reimagine our Future competition + Thank you!

    Associated Project(s): 

    Below is an email sent by Leon Liebenberg thanking the participants of the 2023 ReImagine Our Future competition:

    Dear Participant, Specialist Advisor, Judge, and Organizing Team in the 2023 Reimagine our Future Competition,

     

    I would like to thank you for your participation in the 2023 Reimagine our Future Sustainability Competition for Undergraduates! Thank you for your participation in the 2023 Reimagine our Future Sustainability Competition for Undergraduates! You can read about this year’s winners here and view the winning fact sheets on the competition webpage.

     

    I appreciate the invaluable support of our volunteer advisors and judges! A special word of thanks to this year’s student assistants, Erin Kelley and Allie Garlin, who did a phenomenal job with countless administrative tasks. Allie Cruz, Shreyas Venkatarathinam, and Wondrous Jenkins provided additional support, with thanks.

    I am indebted to the competition co-founders, Professors Robert McKim and Warren Lavey, for providing superb direction and seemingly endless support. Our organizing committee was very fortunate to also benefit from the enthusiastic support of Codie Sterner, Coordinator of Student Sustainability and Advisor to the Student Sustainability Committee (SSC), and Claire Keating, the dynamic chairperson of the SSC. Professor Mike Yao (College of Media; Gies College of Business) agreed to mentor the top-three teams to help take their ideas further. The Office of the Associate Chancellor and Vice Provost for Global Affairs & Strategies (Prof. Reitu Mabokela), and the Center of Global Studies (Prof. Donna Tonini) again supported this year’s competition, as did the Siebel Center for Design (Rachel Switzky and Dr. Saad Shehab). Thank you to one and all!

     

    I look forward to your continued support in future competitions. In the meantime, I wish you and yours the very best over this festive period.

    Kind regards,
    Leon

  4. iCAP Portal Admin Meeting - December 15, 2023

    Associated Project(s): 

    Done:

    Discussion:

    • Discuss Christina's iCAP Portal Header Page Layout designs
    • Question about a TODO: "Collections page: Add image upload option". At a previous meeting we had this TODO, but what was the context? Was it to have a thumbnail for each Collection? Or a banner image? Or an image gallery?
    • Should we link to "Take Action" project from homepage?
      • Replace map link in Highlights?
      • Need to finish Take Action page content
    • Continue discussion of Fancy Page Layout (see the 4 mockups in the October 21, 2022 meeting notes)
    • Continue discussion of improving site's aesthetics
    • Archiving projects
      • Add "Archived" checkbox?
      • Add "Archived" to Visibility options?
      • Add "Archived" to Project Status options? (probably not - this mixes the status of the project itself with whether we still want it to show up on the site)
      • Remove from nested listings, still publicly available?

    TODO:

    • Main map:
      • See CSU's campus map (Sustainability section) for inspiration
      • Campus boundary, like ArcGIS Bicycle Map
      • Improve mobile filter?
      • Use heatmap when zoomed out, switch to markers when zoomed in?
    • (long term goal) look into importing information from another source, e.g. SSC students without iCAP Portal access can put together info in a structured format for automatic import into iCAP Portal
    • Look into Collection embedding again, à la Drawdown Solutions Library Sammy had found ("Filter by sector or area of action" section)
      • SSC project embedding: add category filtering options
    • Metric search/display:
      • Theme (via connected Project, i.e. Theme -> Project -> Metric)
      • Most recent updates as of: (list of years) -> can we query Tracking data?
      • (Internal only) Last updated before (list of years) -> can we query Tracking data?
    • (Low Priority) Make column headers click-sortable on Projects by Project Status page
    • Fancy project layout mockups - keep tweaking #3 to improve contrast
    • Discuss metrics
      • Metrics with lots of data
      • Consider how to handle old metrics that no longer track new data. Archive somehow?
      • Fun with math (e.g. combining multiple metrics)
      • Calculated Metrics on Dev site

    Ideations:

    • Map brainstorming:
      • What if we had a separate Campus Sustainability Tour expandable section, alongside Collections and Themes? Perhaps with a specific order to the locations and information about each location in the infowindow popup? We might have to hand-craft it rather than using Collections, but it might be worth it if we want an interface more like the CSU sustainability map. This could also work for any other bespoke sections we might want to include in the future.
      • Are there other things we'd like to highlight on the map beyond Themes and Collections? If we can think of them, Michael can try to figure out how to make it happen.
      • Michael is working on trying to make the map queries work asynchronously so each filter doesn't require a new pageload. This would make interactions with the map much snappier.
      • Would we like to provide the ability to view individual projects for each section in the sidebar, à la CSU's map?
      • Are there other categories we would like to include, either in addition to or instead of Collections and Themes? Is that information already in the iCAP Portal? If so, perhaps there's a way we can use it... If not, perhaps a new tagging system specifically for the map might help us achieve it?
      • Sarthak: would like to create a Biking Tour
      • Reed: highlight things students can see/experience
    • SSC projects
      • May want to use this Archive of Funded Projects on old SSC site (2019) as a reference for showing SSC project info
      • Discussed using iCAP Portal projects for SSC projects page vs. maintaining own project pages directly on SSC website.
      • One possible challenge - SSC sometimes funds part of a project or provides funding for a period of time (e.g. 1 year) for a longer-term project, so only the project updates for that period of time are relevant, not all updates in perpetuity. How do we handle that?
      • Decided to start with map embed from Student Sustainability Committee Funded Projects collection, then look at adding card-based project embed as well.
      • SSC project integration discussion on 11/30/2023:
        • New projects need to be approved and located appropriately in portal hierarchy
        • Codie considers an SSC project worth adding once it has a CFOAP
        • Projects can be updated w/SSC info by SSC students/employees once they exist in portal
        • How to show projects with multiple funding allocations over time? (e.g. $100K in spring 2020, $100K in fall 2020)
          • Is it the same project over time? Sometimes it is, but sometimes the leaders change and the direction changes significantly
          • Discussed dusting off the Project Funding feature we'd deprecated several years ago. It looks promising for showing SSC's funding of projects!
        • Michael and Codie will meet next week to discuss specifics about what SSC needs the iCAP Portal to be able to do in order to use the iCAP Portal for the SSC website's project listing.
  5. Champaign County Climate Coalition 12/14 Meeting

    Associated Project(s): 

    The following are notes from the meeting.

     

    There was a small discussion on hazardous materials and how to dispose of them.

     

    Earth day event planning and idea session.

    Should the location be altered?

    Crystal Lake

    Meadowbrook

    Success in the past:

    Wide range of activities

     

    Spring flower ID books/ Plant Walk

    A booklet that people can use to hunt spring flowers and identify them.

     

    C4 Hike Series

    A volunteer offered to lead hikes in the spring or summer

    What times would be best for hikes?

     

    C4 Social Event

    January evening social event?

    Riggs as a location

     

     

     

  6. Weekly Update: Kids bike giveaway, Staff, Winter break

    Associated Project(s): 

    All, We’re down to a skeleton crew here as a lot of staff have departed for the semester. We’ll be fielding/repairing donations for the Kids Bike Giveaway this week, as a few last-minute folks have been reaching out thanks to mentions in E-week and the like. We’ll close after hours on Friday for the semester and reopen Tues, January 16th.

    Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to all!

    The numbers:

    Visitors: 23

    Sales: $264
    Memberships: 4 for $120
    Tires/tubes: 7 for $40

    Thanks!

    Jacob Benjamin
    Coordinator -- Campus Bike Center

  7. Discussion about SSC projects in iCAP Portal - December 8, 2023

    Associated Project(s): 

    Michael McKelvey and Codie Sterner met on December 8, 2023 to discuss what information SSC would like to track and display about various SSC-funded projects. Major questions:

    • What fields currently in the iCAP Portal are helpful to show for the SSC project listing?
    • What new fields would be helpful for the SSC project listing?
    • How closely does the current implementation of Project Funding align with what SSC would like to display?
    • Discussion of envisioned listings/displays of information, metadata about projects (e.g. funding dates, status, etc.), and connections between different content types (e.g. project updates - how do we show only a project's updates which are relevant to SSC?)

    See attached Notes document for details.

  8. Illini Lights Out event 12/1

    Associated Project(s): 

    At Fridays event, 8,987 light bulbs were shut off that otherwise would have been left on all weekend, saving $1,367 in energy costs. This also prevented 11 metric tons of CO2 equivalent from entering the atmosphere, which is equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions from 1,236 gallons of gasoline being consumed. That's a huge impact!

     

  9. Education iCAP Team December 2023 Meeting

    The Education iCAP team met on Teams from 1-2 PM on Thursday, December 7th. The team discussed Sustainability in Study Abroad, the Sustainability Literacy assessment, and the Sustainability Internship Coordinator recommendation. Meeting minutes are attached.

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