This project will improve the recycling process in buildings around campus by encouraging sustainable actions and improving the layout of waste and recycling bins within these buildings. Facilities & Services collaborated with ISTC to make an “Indoor Solid Waste and Recycling Collection Assessment”. This assessment determined that the type and layout of collection containers in buildings across campus should be standardized. An update would enable them to be co-located and allow for greater infrastructure consistency.

The Solar Desalination funding program will develop novel technologies or concepts using solar thermal energy to assist in creating freshwater from otherwise unusable waters. Thermal desalination is a potential solution to increase water supplies for municipal water and agriculture, and is an important technology to purify water produced from various industrial processes, including oil and gas production.

This program funds grants/cooperative agreements that implement pollution prevention technical assistance services and/or training for businesses and support projects that utilize pollution prevention techniques to reduce and/or eliminate pollution from air, water and/or land.

The SUNSHOT initiative is a national effort to support solar energy adoption by making solar energy affordable for all Americans through research and development efforts in collaboration with public and private partners.

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). 

In Lighting Retrofit #5 a total of 32,993 T-12 fixtures were replaced with thinner, more energy effiecient T-8 fixtures. This will incur a total Annual KWh  Savings of 5,414,849 hours. Fifty-five university buildings were involved in this part of the T-12 to T-8 Lighting Retrofit Project. The total Simple Payback is estimated to be 3.1 years.