September 20, 2023 Green Research Committee Meeting 4

Present: Stephanie Hess, Tim Mies, Jennifer Fraterrigo, Paul Foote, Jeremy Neighbors, Shari Effert-Fanta, Lisa Moore, Morgan White, Chad Stevens, Sabrina Summers, Maisie Kingren, Daphne Hulse

Absent: Mitchell Bryant

High-level overview (Jeremy leads)

• Full-time GR Coordinator
  
  • Reduce, reuse, and recycle campaign headed by the new coordinator.
• Centralized location for chemicals
  
  • Tim: are there concerns or risks with transporting.
  • Stephanie: opportunity for reuse. Repurpose bottles. ECE, MRL, SCS (no space here though). Various locations that we can split up. Lot of labs have bottles that they use up
• Grad student to help coordinate reduce, reuse, recycle. Additional student supports the GR coordinator with tasks as needed.
  
  • Morgan: need a full-time staff person for GR. But it is not enough. Need a student or two at least, to help support the staff. Without at least 2 paid students, you won’t get far. 40 hours’ worth of student time? During the school year, sometimes 2 students doing part-time still is not enough.
  • Jen: maybe consider what we need first for the program, before determining how many students to include (and staff). Start modest with our first proposal, with the expectation that we will build over time.
  • Paul: typically hire 2-5 students, some stay through the summer, to help with his energy-specific lab programs.
• Where will this GR program reside? OVCRI office, with input from Madhu, Susan, and Ehab.
  
  • Morgan: is it in DRS or is it in iSEE? Both are under VCRI, so that makes sense. It is about sustainability with research. Include requirements in the job description to directly communicate to various stakeholders: research,
  • Paul: green research is all about change and adapting, which isn’t necessarily DRS culture. iSEE is always rolling out new initiatives and is very fluid.
  • Lisa: DRS works with regulation; sustainability is not regulation. Thought DRS first, but then looked into iSEE and thought that GR can be more easily built out under iSEE.
  • Morgan: happy to host it under F&S, but it makes more sense to have it under VCRI.
  • Jen: PI who has a lab perspective: already have a relationship with the audit. Potential to have a partnership with DRS in this new way.
  • Chad: safety is paramount over sustainability, so agree with Jen.
  • Stephanie: conversation with Daphne showed that breaking down barriers between units is very possible.
• GR ambassadors (Jeremy)
  
  • Every department would have GR ambassadors, encourage it at the lab level. Would work routinely with the GR coordinator to roll out
  • Training curriculum, system for communicating what’s going on, what metrics we have, what results we’re seeing.
  • Behavior of labs and groups. Reduce, reuse, recycle campaign.
  • Shut the sash, use of equipment timers, can implement on day one.
  • Promoting some type of certification. Implement GR in other ways. Lab assessment tools (UIUC based internal, or MyGreenLab).
  • Certification would be a longer-term goal with the GR coordinator.
• Incentives
  
  • Recognition is the primary way
  • Stephanie: faculty peer pressure, you want to be that person that is recognized for these initiatives. Susan promote some of these people might be good, too.
  • Chad: could there be monetary award for the research group for their future research. $2500 not a lot, $10K much more head-turning.
  • Tim Mies: Illinois Professionals (highlights), HR. Would that model work for this?
  • Stephanie: working with Patty to work on awards for safety (Oscars for safety). Could work well with research.
• Communication and education
  
  • Well-developed education and outreach program for what we will do.
• Safe energy conservation plans
  
  • Form task forces to address the two different processes in the charge:
    
    • How to hibernate labs
    • How to deal with renovation projects
  • Fully funded capital projects, facilities with significant infrastructure deficiencies, facilities without significant infrastructure deficiencies. Would need to be very collaborative. Building-by-building basis.
  • Morgan: 1.5 years to complete a campus facility assessment. December of 2024 all info will be up to date. It won’t cover all portions, because it’s more visual. How are the fume hoods being used?
  • Stephanie: Wondering the same question.
  • Chad: We don’t want to shut off a fume hood forever. There’s always going to be some revolving research based on grants, etc.GR coordinator could look into high-efficiency fume hoods. Need to have campus support for green energy.
  • Shari: Agree with Chad, with Paul’s team coming in, they can see where improvements can be made. Incur energy savings but not lose the capacity. Finding unique ways to do that. Install the newer technology, like low-flow, high-efficiency will go a long way in meeting iCAP goals. Need help with things that are outside the department’s DOR.
  • Paul: Agree with everyone. Shut down almost all hoods at the top floor of Soybean. Morrill Hall needs a lot of help with renovations. Helped get them out during a pilot program. There are other places that use them 24/7 and they are clean and well managed. We see it all.
• Additional resource for kick-off
  
  • GR coordinator, communications team, IT support

On September 11, 2023, Bike at Illinois reached out to 29 users, who had won the Bike Registration Raffle. Eight winners were from May 2023 to August 2023, and the remaining were from the previous periods for which the original winners had relinquished their prizes.

On July 18th, Brent Lewis approved 16 more sites for installation, and the site on Champaign property was approved on July 6. On September 6th, these 17 sites plus the 7 additional sites sent to earlier this summer on June 7th (the eighth site at Siebel Center for Computer Science was installed on August 1st, so it was omitted from this spreadsheet), were sent to the iron workers for a total of 24 sites.

55 dual bins remain in storage and need site proposals from the zero waste team and approval from Brent Lewis.

Prepare outline for bike audit

• how to do it
• What will we need
• What information do I need
• What information are we trying to get out of this
• How are we trying to do this 
• What resources will we need (GIS)
• When are we doing the audit 
• When do we think we can finish it (number of hours, dates not necessary)
• Condition assessments of bike rack 
• Looking at rack itself and concrete 

Re-familiarize self with stuff

Black racks are ground mounted, we want bike racks on rails (gray ones)

Only university owned bike racks and paths 

Attendance: Jen Fraterrigo, Sophie Boel, Daphne Hulse, Amy Fruehling

Sophie Boel introduction: been with Redwood 2+ years, managing construction and engineering team, moved to external affairs (consumer recycling, outreach and education programs). Taking over the university partnerships piece from Seema. Two pieces to look at together:

• Consumer education, branding materials, and how-to for safe collection and mailing.
• Research - existing program to bolster with data, or bring about together.

Recalling our first conversation with Redwood Materials:

• What is redwood looking for?

• How can the university offer collaborative experiences with Redwood? Research, battery collection drives.

  • Jen forwarded Sophie the documents she had provided Seema as far as research opportunities go.

Redwood's experience with collection:

• 40-50 Audi and Volkswagen dealerships have collection bins - regularly collected and shipped back to Redwood.
• International Rotary Clubs host collection events throughout the country.

Daphne's research on where batteries are sourced from and where they end up across campus. Daphne could only speak to batteries that are procured with university money. There is not a gauge on what the community does with batteries and what their needs are.

• DRS collects Nickel-Cadmium (NiCd), Nickel Metal Hydride (NMH), Lithium (Li) Ion & Polymer (LiPo), and Silver Oxide (AgO) batteries for recycling. Daphne and Jen don't know the name of the recycling vendor, but they will find out. Sophie says there is a chance that the vendor already works with Redwood Materials, we just have to find out. Rechargeable batteries that are part of a device may get removed, and the device sent to someone like Redwood Materials to find recycling outlets for the device materials, too.

What could Redwood provide support on if the university would undertake something with them?

• Bring Seema back into the conversation side (she is involved with business development support).

Has Redwood done many events with universities? No, they haven’t done many events with universities:

• University Nevada - Reno, as this is located close to their HQ.

• Have done events in collaboration with International Rotary Clubs:

  • Environmental & Sustainability Action Group (ES-RAG) - made collection events a part of their piece on sustainability

  • 50-100 collection events - active consumer engagement pieces

  • Earth Day events

• For events, Redwood can send a Redwood employee - if there is a lot overlapping in terms of time of year (especially Earth Day or Month), some of the rotary district governors act on behalf of Redwood go to an event to staff and educate.

• Reach out to Urbana and Champaign counterparts - they hold an annual event for Illinois residents for electronics recycling. Maybe there is a need for more than just once a year? And if they combine forces with the university and Redwood, we would have more resources and support to go around.

  • It will be good to hear what the cities think, as their population will likely be the main source for the waste. Students don't often have these kinds of devices and batteries laying around.

• Any money that can be reinvested to the program? The university tries to find ways to reinvest when possible.

  • Sophie to talk to Seema about this