The Illini Union piloted new recycling bins to encourage appropriate recycling behavior.

The goal of this course is to have students understand how to implement climate action policy through examination of  University building stock and personnel behavior and developing recommendations to alter both stock and behavior to achieve iCAP 2020 goals. This is a building-level, “bottom-up” approach to campus sustainability, where students will be connected with facility managers to gain an applicable understanding of sustainability opportunities.

Course Objectives: 

This project will improve the waste process around the outdoor campus areas and increase recycling participation. It will do this by increasing recycling bin visibility with improved bins and signage, co-locating waste and recycling bins, and improving the overall layout of waste and recycling bins on campus. There are currently 372 concrete trash bins on campus and an additional 60 made of other materials. Facilities & Services initially proposed to remove all 432 of the bins and to replace them with a total of 133 dual bins.

The Illini Union currently has two rooms that are using outdated lighting fixtures. Rooms 104 and 222 of the Illini Union are utilized extensively throughout the day. Both rooms maintain a high level of foot traffic and visibility within the building. An assessment team concluded that transitioning the old lighting fixtures to LED would have an overwhelmingly positive impact on energy consumption and unnecessary waste.

The INFRA program provides dedicated, discretionary funding for projects that address critical issues facing our nation’s highways and bridges, and to projects that are in line with the Administration’s principles to help rebuild America’s crumbling infrastructure

The Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery Program (TIGER) provides funding for innovative, multi-modal and multi-jurisdictional transportation projects that promise significant economic and environmental benefits to an entire metropolitan area, a region, or the nation.

The Buses and Bus Related Equipment and Facilities program provides capital assistance for new and replacement buses, related equipment, and facilities. 

The Building Technologies office leads a network of research and industry partners to continually develop innovative, cost-effective energy saving solutions in building design. Some of the relevant programs under the Building Technologies office include 

1. Emerging Technologies
2. Residential Building

The goal of this Smart & Connected Communities (S&CC) solicitation is to support strongly interdisciplinary, integrative research and research capacity-building activities that will improve understanding of smart and connected communities and lead to discoveries that enable sustainable change to enhance community functioning

The Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District (MTD), City of Champaign, City of Urbana, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are partnering to improve mobility in our communities core through a federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant. The $47.2M Multimodal Corridor Enhancement Project (MCORE) Project is unprecedented in our community’s history and will have a transformative impact.

The University of Illinois became an Affiliate of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) SmartWay® Transportation Partnership in June 2020, after University Housing’s Dining Services joined SmartWay in 2013. The SmartWay program aims to reduce global freight emissions by providing strategies for shippers and carriers to adopt more sustainable practices, and Affiliates help spread the word about sustainable supply chain transportation efforts and grow the SmartWay Program. 

® SmartWay is a registered service mark of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). 

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign participates in Kimberly-Clark’s RightCycle Program.