Attendance: Tyler Swanson, Daphne Hulse, Meredith Moore, Sarthak Prasad, Shawn Maurer, Joy Scrogum, Justin Holding, Paul Foote, Shreya Mahajan, Brent Lewis, Jason Ensign, Tim Mies, Colleen Ruhter, Jonathon Mosley, Marcello, Thurman Etchison, Morgan White, Damon McFall, Robert Roman

• UIC would like to do a screening analysis scenario for a small or micro-scale digester on campus
• UIUC farms investigated this in the past with ACES
• Marcello’s introduction: 200lbs of waste per day in a small-scale digester (in the shape of the container), frequent bottom-line thinking, it’s more about sustainability and the creation of green jobs, involving students, because the economics may be tight for money savings. But there are a few companies that are manufacturing small scale digesters. UIC had a speaker during their TEACH AD webinar who was a student from San Diego California. Installed one of these on their campus, student was the operator of the digester. Interested to see if this is something to be replicated at UIUC?
• Morgan’s introduction: high-level feasibility analysis (not the most robust because of funding limitations). Hear from the college of ACES about a study of 10 years ago.
• Marcello thinks the outcomes weren’t very favorable for this time? This is another possible scenario too. University of Wisconsin Oshkosh is doing something similar. They are partnering with a farm which installed a small-scale digester in the farm for food waste and manure. The university owns the digester and the farmer owns the farmer, so it is a partnership. Maybe we could replicate this. These projects seem to become more and more feasible.
• Marcello’s question for the group: what are the main motivations for UIUC to look into anaerobic digesters?

• Reducing waste, looking at clean energy, protecting the planet
• Do not have an environmentally beneficial or neutral solution for organic waste at the large scale for our campus. Dining is able to do the digester at the sanitary district, but we have animal waste and food waste at more than just the dining halls
• Looking at how to get to carbon neutral energy. Anaerobic digestion was identified in 2010. Dean of Animal Science was ready to push for it, but then he was promoted and then retired
• ACES has agreed with current dean to include the analysis of a large scale digester when they build a new dairy facility, but this is very far down the road
• Swine modernization facility; needs to deal with waste that is there. animals will be added to this space in the future. looking into options for that particular facility.
• Operational + research perspective, a micro-digester looks nice. Oshkosh does tours, internships, etc so it is like a pilot project to demonstrate the feasibility of the technology
• Sanitary district is paid to receive the waste, and they get the benefit of seeing the methane capture
  • It would be good to see the benefits stay in house
• Hypothetically you could create a new position for this, or you could do it through student intern. What happens to the residual material from the digester? can be used as fertilizer, grow food, use the food and food waste goes back to the digester “circular economy”

Marcello’s second question: Takeaway for the old feasibility study?

• It should be at the future dairy facility (conversations were had, maybe not in the study)
• $10M capital cost, so it probably costs more now
• Shared the energy output we would expect if we took all food waste from dining
• Could use as compressed natural gas (CNG) for fleet vehicles
• Combined heat and power (Abbott) which primarily uses natural gas, but could use biogas from an anaerobic digester, there is an opportunity here

CHP, CNG or renewable natural gas are what Marcello is familiar with

Next steps: Marcello will work on an updated feasibility study.

Link to the recording

Done:

• Invoices in project updates
  • The following invoice documents have been moved from public to private:
    • Green Roof on Foreign Language Building: Prairie Moon Nursery Invoice - Seed Order
    • Torch Blinking bike lights received, Light assembly, and Volunteer Training:  Bike-Project-Invoice-UIUC-for-LTN-2019.pdf
    • Quote from TBP to purchase Torch Blinking bike lights: Bike-Project-Quote-UIUC-for-LTN-2019.pdf
    • invoices to pay RSOs:  Weatherization Invoice 2012_ASCE.pdf, Weatherization Invoice 2012_CUSA.pdf, Weatherization Invoice 2012_HKSA.pdf, Weatherization Invoice 2012_Hort Club.pdf, Weatherization Invoice 2012_SECS.pdf
    • Conclusion; Lessons learned; Issues encountered: invoice for missing hardware.pdf, UIUC Double Docker bike racks Return Authorization.pdf, Urbana Shelter (14X63) - Side Stage racks layout.pdf, University of Illinois Side Stage Bike Rack Estimate.pdf
    • New ECE Building Project Solar Panels: Inv_3411_from_Inovateus_Solar_LLC_5244.pdf, TM INVOICE SPECTRUM UPGRADE-4-PRELIMINARY.PDF
    • Quote from MTD to purchase silicone strap bike lights: Light the Night Quote for U of I Facilities & Services - FY19 - 08 29 19.pdf
  • Should we redact information from this project update: Invoice contact information for the University of Illinois?
  • I made the following tool while looking for additional invoice documents to make private: File search (only visible to privileged users). It may come in handy for future searches for uploaded files.
• Reorganize Collections pages (example on dev)
  • Put Project embed and Project Updates embed below their respective listings
  • Put each embed in a collapsible section

TODOs:

• Fancy project page - make images in image banner clickable (go directly to image)
• Fancy project layout mockups - keep tweaking #3 to improve contrast
• Collections page:
  • Add image upload option
• Discuss metrics
  • Metrics with lots of data
  • Consider how to handle old metrics that no longer track new data. Archive somehow?
  • Fun with math (e.g. combining multiple metrics)
  • Calculated Metrics on Dev site
• Use "Take Action" project to encourage students to get involved with sustainability (link from homepage?)
• Track down and resolve informational message on full listing page for Project Updates by Key Objective (see, e.g. Projects Updates for key objective: 1.0 iCAP 2020 Illinois Climate Action Plan)
• Why is the Achieve Zero Waste project map page not loading?

RailSplitter Wind Farm provided the October 2022 Buyer's Share amounts by hour, totaling 2,058.2 Megawatt hours.

The October 2022 Buyer's Share Report is attached below.

On October 28, Meredith Moore, Colleen Ruhter, Betsy Richardson, and Daphne Hulse met with Bradley Vogel and Matt Adler from GSA. The following was discussed:

• Introductions
  • Betsy Richardson: works in environmental compliance with Colleen Ruhter. Their work revolves around regulations with EPA and permits. They signed up with GSA in 2019. Garrett Wong presented at the Green Infrastructure Conference, which is how UIUC became connected with GSA. They are trying to roll this out of compliance and into the world of Athletics, where it should be.
  • Colleen Ruhter: Civil engineer, background in stormwater, currently works on sanitary and drinking water projects as of late.
  • Bradley Vogel: Senior Memberships and Events representative. Bradley works with major athletic events to do waste diversion at games.
  • Matt: Works in the corporate and non-profit side of their services (ex: technological resources used to achieve goals).
  • Daphne: newest to the university, Zero Waste Coordinator.
  • Meredith: Sustainability Programs Manager at iSEE. Keen to see Athletics take initiative and want to help them achieve goals.
• What is athletics currently doing?
  • Are they tracking waste, energy, and water use?
    • UIUC thinks we should be able to track their energy, because they are a campus operation.
    • F&S recently (July 2022) acquired responsibility to take care of the waste at all of their facilities (previously, Athletics contracted with other waste haulers for some facilities).
• Approach Athletics with a money mindset.
  • How much could they theoretically save in costs by reducing their resource use?
• Play to Zero platform.
• Next steps
  • GSA will send UIUC a guide, and we can see about how to track their utilities in the meantime.
  • We should set up another meeting with GSA, especially if we can get Athletic leaders on the call. Keep the conversation going.

The reasons for the putative decrease in recycling rate include the increase in plastic production, flat change in recycling capacity, and China no longer accepting our recyclables. A Time magazine article further suggests that the estimated 9% recycling rate from 2018 was inflated because most of the plastic we sent to China was landfilled or incinerated. Another interesting point: an estimated 30-36% of collected PET is wasted in the recycling process.

The original report can be accessed here: https://bit.ly/US-plastics-recycling-rate . Table 2 provides estimates and sources.