iSEE and F&S are excited to invite you to the Campus Sustainability Celebration 2020! This is an annual event that is especially exciting this year with the signing ceremony of the Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP) 2020, (once every five years) and the presentation of energy conservation and Freezer Challenge awards. Everyone is invited and encouraged to stay afterward for a social-hour!

Campus Sustainability Celebration

October 20, 3 pm • Map

Meredith Moore • Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment

 This opportunity is available online.

Attached are the meeting minutes and chat from the Zero Waste SWATeam meeting on 10/16.

Discussed were the following topics:

Reducing Food Waste

• Post-consumer food waste prevention
• Post-consumer food waste recovery

Vending Machine Alternatives to Single-use plastics

Plastic Recovery

Single Use Plastics

Illini Union Shadowbox attachment

Food Literacy Project

All,

Last week I had an epiphany that we should probably have a sign on the door that lists our hours, even if they are appointment only. That’s in the works, should be ready tomorrow.

With the decrease in testing for grad/staff we’ve had to turn a few people away for not being up-to-date. They have, by and large, been totally understanding. A few people have emailed and canceled ahead of time, which is welcomed.

Set up a secondary pegboard in the shop to better organize freewheel/cassette tools—it’s a vast improvement over the drawer and/or coffee can we’d been using before. Last week I grabbed the scrap metal bin, some miscellaneous parts, and Aquaham Lincoln. He’ll live atop the fridge.

This week I’ll coordinate with Parking to pick up a few bikes—only space for 3 or so—for instructional/teaching purposes with the new hires, schedule a staff meeting for my team, finalize placement for wheel hooks around the shop to increase storage.

The numbers:

Visitors: 12
Sales: $747
Memberships: 4 for $120
Refurb bike: 2 for $430
Tire/tubes: 10 for $57

Thanks!

Jacob Benjamin
Campus Bike Center Manager

The Resilience SWATeam met for the first time on October 5th, 2020 to get to know one another other and assigned team members to specific iCAP 2020 Objectives. We did icebreakers and new student members were introduced to different faculty, staff, and community members that are leading projects throughout campus. The team will have a follow-up meeting on October 9th to discuss work done over the past week and complete the iCAP 2020 Assessment. Attached are the meeting minutes. 

The agenda was as follows:

1. Introductions

2. Evaluation of current progress on completing iCAP 2020 Objectives

All,

Another week in the books! It’s definitely still an adjustment to be open only by-appointment. We’re still getting phone calls and emails about user error and whatnot when scheduling and we’re only seeing 4 or so people per day. But hey, it’s a pandemic. People are still going to the old shop—some internet search engines are not up-to-date but we do have signage over there. Ironies of all ironies since people couldn’t seem to find that tucked-away garage before and are now flocking to it, it seems.

Had a refurb-swap of a loose cranked bike. Thankfully the gentleman wasn’t injured in the failure. He took a different same-priced bike. He was very understanding and that was appreciated.

Still working on upping our staffing levels to a comfortable number.

We’ve only done a handful of bike registrations, which either speaks to the cost-as-deterrence or that people are picking them up elsewhere. Hopefully the latter!

Still optimizing the layout and functionality of our new space but everyone who’s visited that was familiar with the old space has been blown away by the across-the-board improvements. I discovered a closet here that I didn’t know existed which now is storing the Bikes at Work trailer and the smaller kid-sized one. Aquaham Lincoln will likely migrate over here this week.

The numbers:

Visitors: 21
Sales: $562.70
Memberships: 3 for $90
Bikes: 3 for $360
Tires/tubes: 1 for $1

Thanks!

Jacob Benjamin
Campus Bike Center Manager

All,

Last week was our first full week of being open since the pandemic-induced shutdown. We are by-appointment only and making do with that. Visits, sales, and the like are—compared to normal—way down for this time of year.

We also had Light The Night last week and hosted one of the sites here at the Bike Center. It wasn’t as great a turnout as hoped but it was a new location for LTN and it’s a pandemic. We weren’t able to do our normal word-of-mouth publicity during open hours to the degree we’re accustomed. Thankfully we got some signage up at the old garage alerting people to our new location.

This week we’ll work on optimizing the scheduling system, staff meetings, and safety checking a handful of bikes.

Visitors: 38
Sales: $951.50
Memberships: 1 for $30
Bikes (refurb): 5 for $790
Tires/tubes: 3 for $27

Thanks!

Jacob Benjamin
Campus Bike Center Manager

Attached are the final project selection results for this year's Revolving Loan Fund, via Joshua Whitson. A big thanks to everyone who submitted projects and to those who support the Revolving Loan Fund.

Kimmy Chuang and Morgan White met to discuss the agenda and scheduling for the upcoming Resilience Team meeting.