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Projects Updates for key objective: No name

  1. 2022 TEACHAD Webinar: Case study from the Michigan State University South Campus Anaerobic Digester

    Associated Project(s): 
    Reduce Foodwaste
    Anaerobic Digester at Beef and Sheep Study
    Develop Local Carbon Offset Program [ARCHIVED]

    Dana Kirk, Associate Professor at Michigan State University, presented a webinar on May 31, 2022 titled "Universities go green! A case study from the Michigan State University South Campus Anaerobic Digester", which also featured Marcello Pibiri, Senior Research Engineer at Energy Resources Center UIC.

    In case you missed the live webinar or if you would like to view the recorded session again, go to https://register.gotowebinar.com/recording/7048417514261610508. You can register with your name and email to watch the recording. Also attached is the presentation by Dana Kirk from this webinar.

    Marcello and his team at ERC organize the New Technical Education & Analysis for Community Hauling and Anaerobic Digesters (TEACH AD) Program to educate people about Anaerobic Digesters.

    Attached Files: 

  2. iCAP Portal Admin Meeting - June 24, 2022

    Associated Project(s): 
    Sustainability iCAP Portal
    • Michael will look into automation options for filling in the Menu Settings Parent Item (for breadcrumbs) automatically from the Project Parent field
    • Michael will also look at possibilities for expanding the menu length, beyond the built in limit that drupal includes by default
    • The menu settings
    • Is there a way to make sure every project has "sticky at top of lists" automatically? Michael will check - Drupal treats them all as a node, so he can see if Projects can start with "sticky" by default
    • He fixed the image rotation issue
    • On the header layout, he added a view gallery link and moved the project name to align with it. The view gallery link on header layouts shows up even if there are not images associated - so what should we do?  We can add help text for the layout options, to note how it works (related to images, and possibly other things) - we added this in this meeting.
    • Add a third layout called "Fancy Project Layout" - mirror the Header Project Layout and keep the Gallery in the Fancy Project layout, but remove it from the Header layout
    • We also looked

  6. Save Soil Movement - June 2022

    Associated Project(s): 
    Land and Water iCAP Team
    Monitor Soil Health

    Ayush Gupta shared the following message: there are walkathons happening across 60 cities for the Save Soil movement in the States in June. Check it out here and consider participating if you happen to find yourself in one of the cities.

    https://www.consciousplanet.org/walkathon?mkt_tok=MTcyLUVFVS0xOTAAAAGE8zVRsrjyXQ5nVug3pTNsAodzSzhsF8biyXjk-RPUhF6kySegwdhhlpGrm9QbEscE5WZjkujeo47tWtq2Z-UVScbjilsNh1qbL1noUOZ3Y2COy_s

  7. 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: 

  9. Environmental Justice in the Local Communities - Meeting with Bob Flider

    Associated Project(s): 
    Environmental Justice Plan
    Resilience iCAP Team

    Stacy Gloss, Morgan White, and Meredith Moore met with Bob Flider on 6-2-22 to discuss next steps in working with the community to develop an Environmental Justice plan (Resilience and Equity plan). The meeting notes are attached. 

    Attached Files: 

  10. iWG Meeting Minutes 5-23-22

    Associated Project(s): 
    iCAP Working Group (iWG)
    Clean Energy Plan
    Zero Waste iCAP Team

    The iWG met on 5-23-22 and discussed the following agenda. The meeting minutes are attached.

    1. Revisit ZW008
    2. ABE469 – student group worked on developing a scope for the Clean Energy Plan - https://uofi.box.com/s/p8rov2a176ow0nbwy5n3dh3b1ym2u36m
    3. Continue discussion on what to include in the scope of Comprehensive Energy Planning Document
    4. Thanks for all of your hard work this year!
    Attached Files: 

  11. 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. STARS ranking in This Week in Research

    Associated Project(s): 
    Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System™ (STARS)

    Thanks to a combination of new solar and geothermal energy projects, a reduction in water use, and wide-ranging sustainability research projects, UIUC earned its fifth consecutive STARS Gold Rating, the nation’s most comprehensive sustainability rating system for universities to measure sustainability.

    https://emails.illinois.edu/newsletter/1112277641.html

  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)
    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. Illini Union Events, Reusable Water Bottles

    Associated Project(s): 
    Zero Waste Messaging Campaign
    Reduce Single-Use Plastics

    In the Illini Union event marketing, they provide information about water bottle refilling stations that are near the event. This is apart of their messaging campaign to reduce single use plastic in campus events. Illini Union does not have a policy against providing single use water bottles, but encourages event attendees to bring their own reusable water bottles.

  17. 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)

  18. Lighting Retrofits are important - article in Popular Science

    Associated Project(s): 
    Lighting Conservation Projects
    Provide Centralized Communication about Sustainability
    Centralized Energy Efficiency Efforts

    “Incandescent bulbs use more energy and produce more heat due to their engineering designs,” says Paul Foote, energy efficiency and conservation specialist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It’s important to shift to more energy-efficient alternatives to reduce the environmental impacts of incandescent bulbs from the utilization of fossil fuels for electricity, he added.

    By mandating a minimum light output or lumens per watt, manufacturers make sure all bulbs can effectively light up a room, which ensures that consumers will avoid overusing energy with substandard bulbs to get the same level of brightness, says Foote. “When upgrading from incandescent bulbs to LEDs, we have noticed a 60 percent decrease in energy consumption on average, and therefore energy cost avoidance has reduced our utility bill by similar amounts for lighting,” he adds.

    <--break->Popular Science interviewed Paul Foote at F&S as part of their article about the importance of lighting retrofits. the full article is available online at https://www.popsci.com/environment/light-bulbs-sustainability-energy/. 

     

     

     

  20. Low-Carbon Concrete Information

    Associated Project(s): 
    Green Infrastructure

    The production of concrete is responsible for 8% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The articles below detail research about a low carbon concrete formula which reduces the carbon footprint by 40%. UIUC Professors, including Professor Lav Varshney and Professor Nishant Garg, have been involved in the development of this technology.

    https://www.npr.org/2022/05/18/1099680622/can-a-new-concrete-mixture-hel...

    https://theconstructionbroadsheet.com/meta-sees-success-with-lowcarbon-c...

    https://csl.illinois.edu/news/46838

     

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