Paper plays a key role in University of Illinois operations. The University is concerned about the future of the world’s forests and the environmental impacts of paper production, such as energy consumption (and associated carbon emissions), water usage, and waste production.

Use carbon and other environmental indicators for purchasing to avoid environmentally irresponsible products and corporations. Coordinate this effort with other universities.  These indicators should be incorporated into the campus sustainable purchasing policies.

In order to reduce the agricultural emissions, one goal of the 2010 iCAP is to create a local foods network. To reduce the problem of food miles and its related emissions, the campus needs to close the loop in food production, use, and waste recycling. This will require a shift to more sustainable agriculture and animal production practices, providing a support infrastructure of a local foods network, and a large-scale foodcomposting project to eliminate unnecessary food waste.

The iCAP 2020 objective 5.6 is to "Increase the use of local food to 35% by FY30." The responsible campus unit for championing this objective is University Housing. Local is defined as grown within 100 miles of the institution. 

Preventing trash on surface streets is an ongoing goal in keeping storm drains, and water ways everywhere, clean. Recognition among citizens that litter will go directly into a local steam, and eventually major river, is still low. The University will continue its efforts to educate citizens about the harmful effects of littering on our waterways.

Several efforts in this matter include the annual Boneyard Creek Community Day and planned Storm Drain Murals. 

The 2015 iCAP, chapter 8, objective 1 was, "By the end of FY16, conduct a Request for Proposals process for verified carbon offsets — and undertake the first campus purchase of offsets." iSEE developed and published a Request for Proposals (RFP) for purchasing carbon credits, aka carbon offsets.

UIUC participated in Second Nature's C2P2 program, with a verified carbon credit project for credits issued from 2011 to 2021.

One of the long-term energy commitments set forth in the 2010 Illinois Climate Action Plan was to impose charges for the purchase of renewable energy for facilities that use massive amounts of energy. The National Petascale Computing Facility is the only current facility that falls into this catagory. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funds the energy use of the facility. The University plans to impost charges on the NSF for the cost of renewable energy in the next contract negotiations. 

One of the strategies discussed in the 2010 Illinois Climate Action Plan, within the Agriculture theme, was to incorporate carbon costs into food products sold on campus. Incorporating carbon costs into food prices would incentivize the use of local or more sustainable products. This would help the University reach its target of reducing directly related agricultural emissions by 50 percent by 2020.

The mission of the Center for a Sustainable Environment (CSE), formerly the Office of Sustainability (OS) and the Environmental Change Institute (ECI), was to provide assistance to the University in providing national and international leadership on sustainability by supporting education, research, and engagement and to develop and implement strategies for a sustainable campus environment.