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Project Updates for collection: Student Sustainability Committee Funded Projects

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  1. Weekly Update: Reduced hours, Working Bikes this week

    All, While my jury duty service was still in effect, we had reduced hours as needed last week but were able to open fully Wed – Fri. It was the first week of noticeably fewer folks through the doors. As such, we got a few bikes on the sales floor and a dozen or so moved over from storage.

    Tomorrow we will host Working Bikes for our donation event. This is the first one since Nov 2019. We’ll have around 200 bikes to donate and hopefully will have a few folks available to help out and make it go quicker. They’ll be providing pizza for us, too. This event will halve the number of bikes left in storage. The Bike Project and I will sort through the remaining bikes in the coming weeks.

    The numbers:

    Visitors: 43
    Sales: $475.50
    Build-a-Bikes: 2 for $...Expand »

  2. I2SL Winner Announcement

    Associated Project(s): 

    Below is the International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories Winners for Sustainable Achievements. UIUC was awarded excellence for the following. 

    Excellence Winners in the Renovation/Retrofit Category

    • Excellence in Energy Efficiency: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Materials Research Laboratory Renovation
    • Excellence in Energy and Water Efficiency: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign-Holonyak Micro & Nanotechnology Lab Renovation
    ...Expand »

    I2SL

    I2SL Recognizes Winners for Sustainable Achievements

    This year, the International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories (I2SL) was excited to launch the new Sustainable Laboratory Awards Program to acknowledge leading people, projects, and programs in

  3. New iSEE Green Event Certifications

    Congratulations to the Chancellor's Office for Special Events and Commencement for their recent Green Event Certifications! 

    Chancellor's Office for Special Events and Commencement State of the University, Certified October 2022

    Chancellor's Office for Special Events and Commencement Chancellor's Medallion Presentation and Reception, Certified October 2022

    Chancellor's Office for Special Events and Commencement Strategic Planning Summit, Certified October 2022

    Chancellor's Office for Special Events and Commencement Illinois v. Quincy (Exh.) Men’s Basketball, Certified October 2022

    Keep up the great work!

  4. Week 4 - Check in meeting

    This week Aparna got in touch with the staff of transit services from Arizona State University to understand their approach to achieving the Gold BFU certification. 

    Sarthak and Aparna also had a quick overview of the materials shared and brainstormed ideas/recommendations to raise awareness in the campus community as well as keep bike thefts in mind. 

    The next steps would be to familiarize with the topic better, collect all the research materials and make notes/highlight the existing implementation, and make comments on these.

  5. CIF Geothermal Exchange Borefield Information Resources

    Below is an email from Andrew Stumpf regarding the CIF's Geothermal Exhange Borefield.

    From: Stumpf, Andrew J <astumpf at illinois.edu>
    Sent: Monday, October 24, 2022 9:39 AM
    Subject: Re: CEE190 Instructor meeting

     

    Hi Eric,

     

    Yes. The report is available on IDEALS https://hdl.handle.net/2142/111796, so publicly available. Correct, John has been doing further study on the CIF building. He has been working with me on the research… his PhD exam is next Monday, so pretty busy. I’ve only had a brief tour of the mechanicals when it was first built, so I can’t really comment about the system inside. Dr. Tugce Baser in CEE tbaser at illinois.edu I believe received a more detailed tour, so you might want to reach out to her. Here is...Expand »

  6. Multiple schools (OSU, UMich, Purdue) begin involvement with the creation of the survey

    Thank you Mary and Daphne!  The way that Mary worded the question is great to me! 

     

    Daphne, if it is not too bold of me to ask, I was wondering if there might be opportunities to add more questions to the Survey?  I ask as I was recently emailing with the Michigan folks (copied) and both our institutions are interested in pulling together some waste related benchmarking data, specifically around their individual waste goals and how they measure it (hence the diversion rate calculation question).  I am hoping that there is a way we might be able to collaborate, whether that is collaborating through your current survey or perhaps supplementing the data.  That being said, I know very little about the survey,...Expand »

  7. Weekly Update: Strong Towns, Bike Summit, potentially postponing Working Bikes

    Associated Project(s): 

    All, Last week was a busy one. We had Strong Towns talk on Tuesday and the Illinois Bike Summit on Wednesday. Got in some good networking, heard some interesting talks/discussions, and got buzzed by two MTD buses on my bike commute there and then one car on my ride back to the Bike Center. Oh, the irony.

    The cooler weather has curtailed our visitors, but we’ve had a few volunteers, too—always nice.

    Grabbed some bikes from the warehouse last week and will continue to do so as I can this week. I have jury duty potentially all this week and next week, which majorly mucks up my plans for setting up with Working Bikes since I can’t plan past day-to-day. Likely will have to bump that to early November unless circumstances change.

    The numbers:

    ...Expand »

  8. Campus Sustainability Celebration - 10/17/22

    The 2022 Campus Sustainability Celebration was a huge success! Thank you to all who participated! The PowerPoint presentation is attached, and the agenda for the event was as follows:

    • 3-3:15 PM – Welcome
      • Jennifer Fraterrigo, on behalf of Director Madhu Khanna (iSEE)
      • Chancellor Jones
      • Vice Chancellor Susan Martinis (OVCRI)
    • 3:15 – 3:30 PM – Holistic initiatives
      • Plastic reduction (Jen)
      • Clean energy/Solar Farm 3 (Morgan)
      • Greener Campus Program (Meredith)
    • 3:30 – 4:40 PM – iCAP Team presentations
      • Energy
      • Transportation
      • Land and Water
      • Zero Waste
      • Education
      • Engagement
      • Resilience
    • 4:40 – 5 PM – Student groups (SSLC, SSC) – Jack Reicherts and Maiah Caise
      • Closing remarks by Jennifer Fraterrigo (on behalf of Madhu Khanna)
    • 5 – 6 PM –
    • ...Expand »
  9. F&S, North American, and Essity introduction

    Hi Pete, Macie and Daphne!

     

    We were excited last week for you to hear more about the Circularity and paper recycling program that Essity has been utilizing in other areas of the world. Bryan from Essity would like to get his colleague, Mike Kapalko, on a call together to discuss this opportunity further with University of Illinois! Daphne, if Pete and Macie haven’t filled you in, this is an opportunity to use current paper recycling on campus and have it be used to create paper product with Essity. We can inch closer to Zero Waste on campus!

     

    Please let us know if there are dates and times the week of October 31st to set up a Zoom call. Perhaps an hour or so.

     

    Thanks in advance and we are excited to discuss this...Expand »

  10. Week 3 - Check in meeting

    In this meeting,  potential ideas for secured bicycle parking were discussed as ways to promote awareness among the campus community. A capstone proposal outlining the final objectives and deliverables was drafted and Sarthak helped support this discussion sharing an Excel sheet that has all of the goals, current status, and plans for the future of some mentioned ideas towards achieving the said objectives with challenges that are yet to be tackled. 

    This week, Aparna is going to try to get in touch with the transportation team from other universities that have achieved the Gold BFU status to gather some ideas specific to raising awareness about bike thefts. This would navigate the research better. 

    Aparna is also spending...Expand »

  11. Information on moving bees around for commercial agriculture

    Associated Project(s): 

    Information about how commercial bee keeping functions and its impact to overall bee populations was inquired about by Brent Lewis, Landscape Architect. Below is the response from Adam Donzel, an Assistant Professor in Entomology. 

    'Hi Brent,

     

    Yeah, there is work on that.  Here are links to couple studies about it:

     

    https://www.nature.com/articles/srep32023

    https://academic.oup.com/jinsectscience/article/22/1/17/6523145

     

    Basically, yes, there are some stresses involved with migratory beekeeping but sedentary colonies can also have similar issues. In some scenarios, migratory colonies could be healthier as they are moved to areas with good nutritional resources all the time, while those left in place have to deal...Expand »

  12. Week 2 update: Objectives for capstone

    Questions and doubts regarding the literature review done in the past week were discussed including a capstone report outline highlighting the main topics of research. More research work to follow in the coming week to help familiarize with the project's background. Aparna got contact information from the transportation department of UCLA and Arizona State University to discuss the project with their transportation team as the 2 universities have achieved the Gold BFU status and hoping to get a sense of direction or any leads on this. She is also in touch with Prof. Lindsay Braun who is her capstone advisor, and Briana Barr, Thomas Valencia, and Lily Wilcock from the City of Urbana who are working on similar projects.

    The idea was to bring...Expand »

  13. Transportation iCAP Meeting 10/10/2022

    The Transportation iCAP team met on October 20th 2022 to discuss the team's presentation for the upcoming sustainability celebration, review the list of priorities assigned to the team for the year, and discuss progress on fleet replacement plans and the potential for university-wide clean vehicle purchasing policies.

    Link to meeting recording: https://mediaspace.illinois.edu/media/t/1_ufyde47b

  14. Energy iCAP Team Meeting 10/7/2022

    The energy iCAP team met on Friday, October 7th 2022 to review the team's presentation for the campus sustainability celebration, review the team's priorities for the year, and discuss options for advancing the proposed clean energy plan and increasing procurement of renewable energy through power purchasing agreements.

    Link to meeting recording: https://mediaspace.illinois.edu/media/t/1_5bh3gs4r

  15. Weekly Update: Strong Towns, Bike Summit, Working Bikes

    All, Big week of events! On Tuesday, Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns is speaking at the Illinois Terminal and I’ll attend to see how our work as bike advocates and a non-profit can help bolster a strong and vibrant community. And Wednesday is the Illinois Bike Summit at the I-hotel. I’ll be there all day and reducing hours at the Bike Center to account for that. Accordingly, we’ll be open 4 – 6p on that day. I never fail to learn something at this yearly event and am happy to see it back here on campus.

    I’ll be counting/organizing bikes for donation as well this week. Hope to have the Donation Day set by end of the week and so we can begin rallying for some support/help. WB has already agreed to pay for Manolo’s!

    The numbers:

    Visitors: 51

    ...Expand »

  16. iSEE Green Event Certifications

    Happy campus sustainability month! We wanted to highlight some recent iSEE Green Event Certifications for the month of October.

     

    iSEE TED Talk: Eco-Edition Series, Certified October 2022

    iSEE Campus Sustainability Month Trash Clean Up, Certified October 2022

    iSEE Water Taste Test, Certified October 2022

     

    We are excited to see everyone at our sustainability events this month!

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