Email from Jacob Benjamin:

Last week of November was slow, as best I can recall, and sales corroborate that. We’re working through the kids bikes we have and will hopefully get more donations in the coming weeks.

We’ve got a half dozen regular bikes on the sales floor but with the wintry snowy weather we’re experiencing, I don’t see those moving quickly. Have another half dozen that need final approval.

This week we begin our M/W/F hours, which we’ll keep til the end of the semester and into next semester, as the colder weather tanks our demand.

The numbers:

Visitors: 48
Sales: 492.50

Memberships: 9 for $270

Tires/tubes: 16 for $95

Thanks!

The Zero Waste team met on November 14th at 1:30 pm. Attached are the meeting minutes.

October 2025 photos of the Florida Orchard Prairie have been added to the box folder.

This year’s competition drew a record 312 participants from 13 universities, with 62 judges completing the first-round evaluations. A group of 13 finals judges is now reviewing the finalists to determine the top award recipients. We are deeply grateful to all these volunteers for their generosity of time and for helping make this competition a success.

A list of finalists appears below. Warm congratulations to the 13 finalist teams on their exceptional submissions, and sincere congratulations to all participants for your thoughtful fact sheets and compelling ideas. The competition was especially strong this year. Your work is both inspiring and forward-looking, and we hope you will continue to develop these ideas in pursuit of a more sustainable future.

The 13 finalist teams will briefly present their projects on Saturday, December 6, 2025, between 10:00 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. (U.S. Central Time).  The ceremony will be held entirely on Zoom to accommodate our many participating institutions.

FINALISTS IN THE 2025 REIMAGINE OUR FUTURE COMPETITION
(In alphabetical order of the team leaders’ last names)

Anastasiia Albut, Kseniia Zviahintseva, Anastasiia Lichna – International Humanitarian University Ukraine

Andrea Jimena Arias-Diaz, Ricardo Robles-Fletes – National Autonomous University of Mexico  

Isabella Bird, Katie Kan, Emily Herbst – University of Birmingham

Briana Harris, Kevin Bustamante – Waubonsee Community College

Matthew Kwong, Isaiah Kim, Amina Mandzukic, Aarushi Tiwari, Kaushal Siruvuri, Lionel Yan, Andrew Low, Adi Jha – University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Henna Naveed – University of Birmingham

Tricia Newman – University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Angel Ofori-amanfo, Victory Ndibe-Onwuka, Elohor Oghorodi, Lukas Akyildiz – University of Birmingham

Akhil Raizada, Logan Justiniani, Anna Aler, Arush Chatterjee, Arnav Pande, Gianna Niecestro, Sarina Shah, Jack Visnjevac – University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Brooke Rember, Olivia Fleury, Niamh Mclaren-Moreton, Phoebe Hill, Emily Thomas – University of Birmingham

Zaara Tariq Saeed, George Hodgson-Wilde, Xiaojie Deng, Julia Thornton – University of Birmingham

Ayush Thaker, Vidipta Roy, SaarthakJain, Marcus Lam – University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign  

Crystal Zhao, Marlo Decapo, Valeria Echavarri, Yashwanth Nagarajan, Torin Schroeder – University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

The Land and Water Team met for its November monthly meeting on Friday, November 21, from 2:00 to 3:00 PM on Teams. This month, the team listened to a student conducting research on the usage of gray water systems in Illinois and other states and institutions. This research will help the team gain support from other organizations to potentially amend the Illinois plumbing code to permit the use of gray water in toilet flushing systems. The team was also updated on the status of the Florida Orchard Prairie maintenance, which will be taken care of by Red Bison, who is eager to work on this project. The team also discussed the pros and cons of maintaining our Bee Campus USA certification, which requires significant funds and effort to improve pollinator status, a task that is largely already accomplished by various campus groups. Attached are the meeting agenda and notes. 

Please see attached correspondence from Chancellor Isbell.

At this past Friday's Illini Lights Out event, a total of 245 volunteers shut off 3068 light bulbs that otherwise would have been left on all weekend, saving $466.78 in energy costs. This also prevented 4.78 metric tons of CO2 equivalent from entering the atmosphere, which is equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions from 469 gallons of gasoline being consumed. That's a huge impact! 

Email from Jacob Benjamin:

All,

This past weekend was the Bike Project’s Cranksgiving event, which we helped promote. The event raised over $2,000 worth of food/supplies for Wesley Food Bank and the McKinley Pantry at Garden Hills.

Elsewhere, I’ve got most of the abandoned bikes separated in each of the containers but not yet fully organized. Will continue work on that this week.

Next up will be our Kids Bike Giveaway event. I’ll get a count of current inventory between here and the Bike Project in urbana this week, and begin refurbishing them.

This will be our last week being open M – F as we are closed for Fall Break and will be M/W/F after the break.

The numbers:

Visitors: 58
Sales: 490.25
Memberships: 6 for $180
Tires/tubes: 13 for $103

Thanks!

RailSplitter Wind Farm provided the October 2025 Buyer's Share amounts by the hour, totaling 1900.70 Megawatt hours.

The October 2025 Buyer's Share Report is attached below.

The iCAP Education Team met on November 7th from 12-1pm via Teams. The group discussed reviving the Levenick Teaching Fellows Program with updated incentives, planning the Green Career Forum for February 18–19, and reviewing findings from the Sustainability Literacy Assessment. They also noted progress on creating an automated database of sustainability-related courses. The meeting minutes are attached. 

Email from Jacob Benjamin:

Snow! First significant snowfall of the year. Made for a messy commute in, but always better than driving.

This upcoming weekend is the Bike Project’s event Cranksgiving, a bicycle food drive. We have a bike trailer set up for canned food donations this week. Weather’ll be great for the event—projected to be 70°!

We’ll continue to tackle donations this week and get some more bikes done for our various programs.

The numbers:

Visitors:
Sales: $823.50

Bikes (Refurb): 1 for $170
Memberships: 11 for $330

Tires/tubes: 13 for $105

Thanks!

The attached PDF contains performance metrics for Zipcar usage on campus for October 2025.

The iCAP Engagement Team met on Thursday, November 6th, 2025 from 4:00pm-5:05pm via Microsoft Teams. The team shared updates about the status of OneIllinois engagement, Greener Campus, and the ZeroWaste Training Module. The team also discussed a possible Newsletter post for E-Week regarding sustainability and the Certified Green Office Program.

The meeting minutes are attached.

The Architecture Review Committee (ARC) has approved 24 off-rack locations for Veo bikes on campus. This will reduce the impact on the campus bike racks and it would allow for more space for personal bicycle users to lock their bicycles to those high traffic locations. 

The F&S Paint Shop will add green paint at these locations to denote Veo locations. The Work Order is issued: 11290535

Email from Jacob Benjamin:

Deceptive time of year: cooler temps usually mean fewer folks in, but that did not prove out. We were all-stands-full for a good bit last week. This week feels like just about peak foliage, which is a great time to ride a bike!

Additionally, this week we’ll be tackling the abandoned bikes and preparing for our Kids Bike Giveaway event. We have ~5 kids bikes done already here at CBC. I’ll do inventory at Urbana and meet with Marketing folks to get the word out.

The numbers:

Visitors: 89
Sales: $595

Memberships: $10 for $300
Tires/tubes: 16 for $146

Thanks!

Grounds for the Garden at Bookstore Starbucks

The Illini Union Bookstore Starbucks offers the Grounds for the Garden program. Faculty and staff can stop by the Starbucks at the Illini Union Bookstore and pick up FREE five-pound bags of used coffee grounds which you can use to add to your gardens and/or compost pile. Bags are available on a first-come, first-served basis and are placed outside of the Starbucks counter. Stop by any time and any day. If bags aren't available, just ask a barista. Details and why coffee grounds are good for your garden.

The Volunteer Instruction Guide was updated for the fall 2025 Bike Census. Please see attached

Email from Jacob Benjamin:

I was out Friday and Monday so this is a day late. I was in Berkeley, CA which has roundabouts at all of their side-street intersections. (Hint, hint.)

Pretty uneventful week otherwise. I’ll continue work on the containers and begin prep for our Kids Bike Giveaway event, which’ll be on 12/20. Look for flyers/advertisements for that next week.

The numbers:

Visitors: 106

Sales: $157.50
Memberships: 15 for $450
Bikes (B-a-B): 1 for $50
Tires/tubes: 12 for $101

Thanks!

At this past Friday's Illini Lights Out event, 3068 light bulbs were shut off that otherwise would have been left on all weekend, saving $466.78 in energy costs. This also prevented 4.78 metric tons of CO2 equivalent from entering the atmosphere, which is equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions from 469 gallons of gasoline being consumed. That's a huge impact! 

At this Friday's Illini Lights Out event, 3454 light bulbs were shut off that otherwise would have been left on all weekend, saving $525.51 in energy costs. This also prevented 4.7 metric tons of CO2 equivalent from entering the atmosphere, which is equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions from 462 gallons of gasoline being consumed. That's a great impact!