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Project Updates for collection: Student Sustainability Committee Funded Projects

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  1. Weekly Update: Kids bike give away; Build-a-Bike

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center

    All, Last week we were able to fix up and give away 10 kids bikes to ISCU (Immigrant Services of Champaign-Urbana). Great to pass along valuable bikes to a valuable cause, and nice to clear some space in the Bike Center. We also virtually sold out of bikes, as we were down to a single for-sale bike on Wednesday. Fixed up 2 more for Friday but that’s likely not going to cut it, so we’ll move to finish a few more builds this week.

    We had one person start on a Build-a-Bike on Friday. Hopefully should be done today or Wednesday.

    Numbers:

    Visitors: 31

    Sales: $1,289.80
    Bikes (refurb): 4 for $$675

    Memberships: 7 or $210
    Tire/tubes: 3 for $24

    Thanks!

    Jacob Benjamin
    Campus Bike Center Coordinator

  4. Weekly Update: Closed for Juneteenth, Donations

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center

    All, Short week with the observed Juneteenth holiday on Friday. We’ve steadily been receiving donations but most of them are doomed for the scrap pile. But at least we’ll get some decent parts off them.

    Got a few bikes in the queue that should make the sales floor by end of week.

    The numbers:

    Visitors: 22
    Sales: $568.19
    Bikes (refurb): 2 for $215
    Memberships: 7 for $210

    Thanks!

    Jacob Benjamin
    Campus Bike Center Coordinator

  6. Water bottle reduction at the Union

    Associated Project(s): 
    Achieve Zero Waste

    Per J.B. Bailey, the Assistant Director for Programming, the Union includes marketing on all events that the Union has water filling stations near where the event is occurring and encouraging students to bring their own bottles to fill up there. The goal is that this will allow us to reduce the amount of disposable cups we provide at our events where drinks are provided. The board has also discussed not providing plastic water bottles as give-a-ways moving forward. 

  8. Meeting with Lisa Jackson re: new student swag

    Associated Project(s): 
    Achieve Zero Waste
    Sustainability in New Student Orientation
    Campuswide Zero Waste events

    Meredith Moore and Jennifer Fraterrigo met with Dr. Lisa Jackson, Director of New Student Programs within Student Affairs to discuss new student swag. The goal is to promote sustainability and reduce plastic waste. The meeting notes are attached. 

    Attached Files: 

  10. SSC Extension Request for Dump and Run

    Associated Project(s): 
    Dump and Run

    An extension request was submitted for Dump and Run, an SSC-funded project. This request addressed a change in the project's scope, including ending a partnership with the University YMCA, potential rebranding, and new initiatives for UIUC-led collection programs.

    See the scope change in the attached files.

    Attached Files: 

  11. Weekly Update: Donations, Closed on Friday for Juneteenth

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center

    All, We’re still working our way through our donations windfall. Open hours have been steadily busy, but it’ll be interesting to see how the extreme heat of the next couple weeks impacts visit numbers.

    We are selling bikes about as fast as we can build them, especially since we’ve been too busy to build much during shop hours.

    This week we will only be open Monday/Wednesday and closed Friday for Juneteenth (observed).

    The numbers:

    Visitors: 31
    Sales: $915.30
    Memberships: 2 for $60
    Bikes: 3 for $595
    Tires/tubes: 7 for $60

    Thanks!

    Jacob Benjamin
    Campus Bike Center Coordinator

  12. Request to Use Learning Materials in Land & Water Theme

    Associated Project(s): 
    Water Conservation [ARCHIVED]
    Sustainability iCAP Portal

    Below is sustainability intern, Alec McKay's permission request to use Jonathan Tomkin's lecture materials for the Land & Water theme. Professor Tomkin gave permission for his materials to be published on the theme page.

    Hi Jonathan!

    My name is Alec McKay, the guy who messed up scheduling the ENSU 310 final last semester, and I’m an intern working for Morgan White, the Associate Director for Sustainability. We’re working on updating the primary projects on the iCAP Portal. Here is an example of what the primary project page for the Land & Water theme looks like: https://icap.sustainability.illinois.edu/project/responsible-stewardship-campus-land-and-water

    Our target audience is incoming freshmen and current students who are interested in sustainability at UIUC but have little to no knowledge about it. One of the things we want a primary project page to do is provide some motivation and background information for the theme. In the context of Land & Water, we’d like to answer the question, “Why conserve water?”

    I think some of the videos from your Introduction to Sustainability Coursera course would be great for this! May I have your permission to put some of the videos from your course on the iCAP Portal? I don’t know how the copyright and intellectual property laws work, so is there any specific way you would want or need to be credited?

    If you want more information regarding what we’re changing on the iCAP portal, feel free to let me know!

    Thanks!

    Alec

     

  13. Weekly Update: Bicycle Donations

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center

    All, We were closed Monday for Memorial Day and so were only open W/F last week.

    Thanks to the generosity of a local bike shop, we were absolutely inundated with donations—something to the tune of 15-20 bikes. Then two community folks dropped off even more donations. Needless to say, I’ll be processing these all week.

    I dropped off flyers with WRC last week, too, in the hopes of expanding our reach to folks that haven’t already come into CBC.

    The numbers:

    Visitors: 15
    Sales: $557.95
    Bikes (refurb): 1 for $180
    Build-a-bike: 1 for $30

    Memberships: 4 for $120
    Tires/tubes (new/used): 12 for $76

    Thanks!

    Jacob Benjamin
    Campus Bike Center Coordinator

  14. Map My Emissions link

    Associated Project(s): 
    Reduce Emissions from Transportation

    "Transportation of all kinds accounts for nearly a quarter of global CO2 emissions(Opens in a new window). Commuters often have little choice about how they can get to work. But even if they make a concerted effort by using tools like Map My Emissions(Opens in a new window), which calculates how much CO2 commuting options generate, it’s hard to beat the zero emissions generated by walking from one room to another." per https://www.pcmag.com/news/remote-work-will-never-be-the-same-and-thats-...

  15. Spring 2022: iSEE Quarterly Update (iQ)

    Associated Project(s): 
    Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment (iSEE)
    iSEE funding for Campus as a Living Lab (CALL)
    Certificate in Environmental Writing (CEW) [ARCHIVED]
    iCAP 2020: Illinois Climate Action Plan
    Freezer Challenge
    Sierra Club surveys [ARCHIVED]
    Solar Farm 2.0
    Certified Greener Campus Programs

    The Spring 2022 iSEE Quarterly Update (iQ) was released with the following message from Madhu Khanna, the Interim Director of iSEE:

     

    Greetings Colleagues,

     

    Attached, please find the Spring 2022 edition of iQ, our quarterly update. You will see that in this six-page pdf recapping the recent semester, we had plenty of news and updates from our research, education, events, and campus sustainability fronts.

     

    But the work did not end there! Since the semester ended, we have had two other exciting announcements:

     

    • The U of I campus was rewarded with the only USDA NIFA “Farm of the Future” grant. Our I-FARM project will be an 80-acre testbed for merging technology, sensing, and agronomy into a farm setting with crops and livestock that will be productive and profitable. Read our June 1 news release >>>
    • In addition, for the fifth consecutive time, our campus reached Gold-level status in the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS) run by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE). New solar and geothermal energy projects, a reduction in water use, and wide-ranging sustainability research helped us reach this level yet again. Read the May 25 news release >>>

     

    For more up-to-date news from iSEE, please sign up for our E-newsletter at https://illinois.edu/fb/sec/5031776.

      

    Best wishes for a healthy and productive summer,

     

    Madhu

     

    Attached Files: 

  16. Weekly Update: Grabbing scraps; Safety Checking bikes

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center

    All, I was out most of last week and my staff ably handled running the shop in my absence. This week we’ll only be open W/F due to the Memorial Day holiday.

    Thanks to Todd for grabbing scrap over the weekend as we were getting quite full on that. Still have a few more bikes to strip.

    This week I am meeting with a prospective new hire, a U of I dad who is involved with a similar non-profit group in Boise, ID (of all places), and safety-checking a few bikes that’ll help us build our for-sale inventory back up.

    The numbers:

    Visitors: 21
    Sales: $1,043.00
    Bikes (refurb): 3 for $550
    Memberships: 6 for $180
    Tire/tubes (new/used): 10 for $77

    Thanks!

    Jacob Benjamin
    Campus Bike Center Coordinator

  18. Sarthak met with Gabe Lewis to talk about Electric Vehicles and EV charging

    Associated Project(s): 
    Increase use of EVs and other Alternative Service Vehicles
    Use Electric Vehicles (EV)
    Install Public Use Electric Vehicle (EV) Charging Stations

    On May 24, Sarthak Prasad met with Gabe Lewis to talk about EVs. Gabe is the Transportation Planner at the Champaign County Regional Planning Commission (CCRPC) and he currently leads the RPC Tech Committee which consists of 7 members – Champaign, Urbana, Savoy, Rantoul, St. Joseph, Mahomet, and Champaign County. Most recently, they had been talking about the feasibility of EVs in urban as well as the rural areas in the county.

    We talked about the US DOT's Charging Forward, an EV toolkit, that is primarily focused on EV Charging in the rural areas: https://www.transportation.gov/rural/ev/toolkit

    We also talked about Clean City Coalition. State of Illinois does not have a coalition, but Chicago has one and we could potentially reach out to them: https://cleancities.energy.gov/coalitions/

    https://cleancities.energy.gov/coalitions/chicago

    Also discussed the federal funding available through National EV Infrastructure (NEVI), Carbon Reduction Program (CRP), State and Local Planning for Energy (https://maps.nrel.gov/slope/), and EV Pro Lite (https://afdc.energy.gov/evi-pro-lite)

  20. meeting with F&S and iSEE about Zero Waste programs

    Associated Project(s): 
    "Don't Waste" with Coca-Cola
    Achieve Zero Waste

    iSEE and F&S met to discuss commodity recyclables at F&S and the interest in looking at getting Coke to buy our PET, the Zero Waste messaging campaign and potential collaboration with Coke on the messaging for our Use the Bin campaign.  Also, Coke offers a tailgate package that may be helpful in our conversations about increasing recycling at athletic events.

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