Project 4 Less strives to fight food insecurity within our local community. Student dining halls can create incredible amounts of food waste which is normally just thrown away, thereby wasting energy, time, manpower, resources, and money. Simultaneously, Urbana-Champaign has the largest percentage of food insecure households in the entire state of Illinois—people who don’t always know where they’ll find their next meal.
The Committee for Environmental Sustainability within Illinois Student Government (ISG) is investigating the prospect of including a sustainability GenEd credit for all students. ISG developed and passed a resolution in December 2019 (attached). The proposal was presented at the Sustainability Council meeting in spring 2021.
The ISEE-ACES-F&S Sustainable Land Management Committee is designed to evaluate and incorporate sustainable land management practices at the University of Illinois South Farms on non-research land and beyond the campus boundaries on some of the University-owned land. This follows the recommendation made by the Agriculture, Land Use, Food, and Sequestration Sustainability Working Advisory Team and Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP) Working Group.
Food insecurity is a major public health issue in the United States, affecting over 1 million Illinoisans in 2018 and over 13 million Americans in 2019 (Feeding America, 2019; USDA, 2019). Furthermore, nearly 20% of greenhouse emissions come from livestock and around 70% of all land used for agricultural production is used for breeding and maintaining livestock (UN Report, 2006; FAO Report, 2012).
Near campus exists an under-utilized living laboratory that could contribute significantly to student education and improve campus sustainability initiatives like iCAP. This 13-acre prairie experiment was established in 2018 with funding from a USDA grant. Across 96 plots, the project was designed to examine interactions between soil, microbes, prairie plants, agrochemicals, and bees with the goal of identifying best prairie restoration practices for habitat adjacent to crops.
Rain is a blessing and a curse on our research farms. We cannot grow a crop with out it but when it comes in excessive quantities has a destructive result on University farms. Our farms are intertwined too so as water flows downhill it passes from one department farm to the next. This project looks to redesign the Energy Farm waterway and install a waterway on the Animal Sciences farm to the west so that water flow can be channeled to the Embarrass River in a more direct and environmentally sound path.
In 2010, grant funding from the Energy Biosciences Institute established buildings that support the research, education, and operations of the Energy Farm. This facility is utilized by students and researchers in biofuel and sustainability research. HID lighting in the main high bay work area has been measured to be well below minimum standards for a safe and efficient work space.
This project will upgrade fixtures from HID to LED and also install occupancy sensors in workspaces that are observed to remain lit well after activities have concluded by the occupants.
This project proposes using funds for setting up one monitoring station for Air Quality for streaming live data through an open access web dashboard accessbile to all campus community members.
The Illini Union piloted new recycling bins to encourage appropriate recycling behavior.
As the iCAP 2020 says, "Using information gathered from capital projects, faculty members and researchers can collaborate with F&S to develop a reference database of calibrated energy models for campus buildings. This might be the product of student classroom projects. The campus could then use these models to prioritize building retrofits and determine the preferred level of improvements (i.e., envelope versus mechanicals) for each building." (Page 41).
