On October 5, UIUC sustainability representatives met with Coca-Cola and discussed the following:

Attendance: Jake Slager, Daphne Hulse, Brette Bennett, Greg Grantham, Kendall Chadwick, Jeff Holman, Meredith Moore, Shawn Patterson, Cole Kouvaris, Sarah Carten, Thurman Etchison, Shreya Mahajan, Sean Chance, Jen Fraterrigo

• You Are Here (YAH) Agency: leading the campaign around Don’t Waste, which will be broader than just cans and bottles.
• Jake sent Daphne the updated digital signage with the new logo.
  • Daphne has added to Box.
• Daphne + Meredith need to determine which department needs how many bins. We will review quantities with Jake. Coca-Cola will pay for them this time around. Some of them can be used for the upcoming Zero Waste Basketball Game. Next week Jake wants to talk about sustainability audit from Circular Solutions
• Jake would like to move the meeting up. Meredith will check with Morgan and Jen about their schedules.
• Make sure to add Tony to the Box folder. He had helped distribute signage in the past.
• YAH: campus ambassador work with Coca-Cola. Brought in to help support the Don’t Waste work on campus. Goal of today is to get background knowledge on the campus.
  • What will this campaign encompass: what does Don’t Waste mean to students? Ideas about content generation (videos, social media?) How to use messaging, the tone, how should the logo be used.

What inspired the Don’t Waste campaign?

Jake: Not late to the party here. Jake joined the project in late July 2022. There had been some folks who had met with U of I in the past. Daphne joined in September 2022. She’ll be main stakeholder and point of contact for UIUC. There are many departments across campus, which makes it challenging. This is how we got to the zero waste event.

Meredith: Didn’t provide easy opportunities previously to provide an easy way to recycle. Also, a way to work with DIA and athletics.

Jen: How do we reduce plastic waste on campus? Switching to aluminum wasn’t an option, but best strategy was to evaluate how well the recycling program was operating. Looking at strategies to reduce waste.

Jake: glad to be a conduit to have discussions about things on campus.

Was their initiative on recycling prior to Don’t Waste? Any other slogan?

Focused on waste and plastic reduction, within the last 3 years they have not had a centralized campaign like this. Bin It was a prior intiative (about a year long, made some fun videos. Not nearly as robust as Don’t Waste, it wasn’t on bins. It was on social media and newsletters).

Goals, apart from increasing recycling?

Meredith: Waste reduction is primary goal, then reduce plastic, then second step is to recycle. Really trying to increase the diversion.

Jen: There have been a couple of waste audits. They are snapshots, so not sure how it could imapct all of campus

Meredith: They were done before the 3-stream receptacles. Not sure how helpful it would be. WTS would have more data

Jake: Circular Solutions waste audit details to come next week. Determine a cost associated.

Assets being developed? Found a strong connection between marketing or social media?

Jen: We have no data analytics capacity, but it would be wonderful if we did.

Jeff: want to make sure what we are providing UIUC is effective.

Jen: students do use the Illinois app. There is a QR code (link COVID test results with their identity). So there is an opportunity here to explore

Brette: is there a way to track sporting events on campus?

Jen: Don’t know of anything.

Thurman: The Illinois app has dining and sporting information, can use as ID in some instances, local campus radio station, geo-tagging/fencing, information about the local transit. Can find out who hosts the app

Meredith: we can ask Tony (iSEE) who was able to get all sustainability events on the full campus calendar. In some way, we are already connected

Greg: http://sites.superfanu.com/committotheg.com/index.html use the loyalty element and rewarding that behavior

Are there other assets that would make a big impact on the campaign (signage, content, digital boards, non-traditional things, what might be missing)?

Brette: can revist this and UIUC can provide feedback later.

Jen: Basic infrastructure (rec fields, some buildings, poritions of campus without receptacles)

Meredith: worth revisiting. Sustainable giveaways. With the quantity, this is challenging (welcome celebration - which we partnered with Coke on earlier this year - and athletics). Things like durable water bottles, that get people thinking about waste and recycling

Jen: we did talk to some folks at OSU MyCup program (evolved to rewarding people who use reusable vessels for FreeStyle Machines, and charging all others). We haven’t talked internally about this, something to follow up on with Thurman and others.