Hi Pete and Shawn—

Here are my zero-waste coordination updates from this past week: 

• I met with two students from Business in Environmental Responsibility, a campus RSO. They are interested in volunteering to help with the glove recycling program. Not many of their members have cars, so they are not in a good position to assist with transporting gloves from collection sites to the trailer at PPSB, so we talked about help they might give with identifying locations on campus that use disposable gloves. I will consult with Morgan on whether we might use that information to promote the program more broadly across campus.
• A lab in RAL is working on becoming a participating location. They are very interested but would like assistance with transporting gloves to PPSB. I will consult with Morgan on whether we have any options for them.
• I contacted Rebecca Seymour, who manages the campus Starbuck’s locations. She is moving forward with providing used coffee grounds to John McNally, a local farmer who can use them for fertilizer. He had inquired about payment for providing transportation to pick them up, but we don’t have any funds for it. Nonetheless, he and Rebecca are moving forward with the arrangement, starting with the Starbuck’s located in the Illini Union. My contacts with the Sustainable Student Farm and a few other local farmers and the Urbana Park District’s gardening program did not result in any additional interest in the program. One or two contacts indicated that they could use the grounds but would need them to be delivered.
• I updated the glove recycling page in the iCAP Portal to show that Krannert Art Museum is participating. 

Best regards,
Marya Ryan
Zero Waste Coordinator

Assess existing courses to identify which courses meet specific requirements in the learning outcomes, and identify gaps for future curriculum development

Course listings for undergraduate and graduate levels were examined to develop an inclusive list of courses related to sustainability.  An online survey of department heads was conducted in Fall 2010 which served to verify the list developed, sought feedback on perceived gaps and desired future offerings, and gained insight about the degree to which the learning outcomes are being addressed (58 departments responded out of 165). The inventory is designed to help students identify courses by several categories, including whether a course fulfills a general education requirement and whether the course is undergraduate and graduate level.  The inventory revealed more than 250 courses and can be found on the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment website. 

The inventory conducted at the time did not distinguish between sustainability related and focused courses.  Sustainability related covers only one aspect of sustainability, i.e., economic, social, or environmental, whereas focused covers all three.

The 2015 iCAP chapter 8, objective 2 is, "By the end of FY17, develop an administrative mechanism to enable campus units to voluntarily purchase carbon offsets." During FY17, iSEE is executing a campuswide purchase of offsets. A starting inventory of carbon offsets will be put into a Virtual Storeroom, for internal purchases by campus units.  Through this website, units can directly engage in emission reductions, with the benefit of the initial bulk purchase.

The Carbon Credit sales funding has been approved by Director of iSEE Evan DeLucia and Interim Executive Director of F&S Helen Coleman for buying 10,000 additional carbon offsets, to provide the initial inventory for a new Virtual Storeroom for carbon offsets.

Background

If your department is interested in reducing your carbon footprint from air travel (or other things), you can go online to the Virtual Storeroom and purchase (using a CFOP) offsets from iSEE.  iSEE will collect the funds from these sales to replenish the Carbon Offset storeroom inventory when it gets low.

Some campus units (or individual faculty or staff) may wish to voluntarily offset their carbon emissions, for example, from air travel to scholarly meetings. iSEE could work with the Office of Business and Financial Services (OBFS) to develop an administrative mechanism that would allow such units to “buy in” to periodic campuswide purchases of verified offsets.

By the end of FY 17, iSEE helps develop the virtual storeroom which stocks the carbon offsets instead of tangible goods. The carbon offsets will be stored in a virtual storeroom, where units can buy offsets to reduce their carbon emissions for any reason. For example, you can buy them to reduce the carbon emissions of steam, electricity, even university cars, and air travel, which is the main carbon emission source that needs offsets rather than reduction, according to the iCAP. The money what we spend in the virtual storeroom will be collected in a fund that will be used for the purchase of more carbon offsets, when the inventory is low.