First-Ever Illini Football Tailgate Recycling Event

Sep 19, 2023 | 10:12 am

New orange and blue recycling boxes and a green dumpster will be available for fans near Memorial Stadium

Illinois Football takes on Florida Atlantic University (FAU) on Saturday, September 23, at Memorial Stadium. Before the non-conference game, several orange and blue recycling boxes and a bright green dumpster will be available to help Fighting Illini fans recycle bottles and cans, which will prevent more items from reaching the landfill.

Individuals in RVs or vehicles entering Lot 31 and Lot 32 will be given blue bags to use to drop off empty bottles and cans at the utility-sized recycling dumpster on the east side of Lot 31, along South First Street. Plastic bottles and aluminum cans and bottles may also be placed by fans into boxes within Grange Grove and around the Illinois Tent in Lot 31. Items may also be thrown in the dumpster.

This first-of-its-kind Tailgate Recycling event on the Urbana campus is a part of the Don’t Waste initiative. Coca-Cola; the Division of Intercollegiate Athletics; the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment; and Facilities & Services are partnering to reduce waste at major campus events and support reaching zero waste goals. Approximately 10 volunteers will wear “Be Orange, Go Green” shirts and will be ready to assist the recycling efforts.

Zero Waste Coordinator Daphne Hulse said, “Illini fans support their team and university like no other. The new Block I–wrapped recycling bins and marked dumpsters for the FAU game will allow tailgaters in these areas to easily recycle bottles and cans and add to the number of pounds of materials diverted from the landfill on our recycling scoreboard.

The new recycling boxes will stay in place for all remaining Illini home games. The next recycling event with volunteers will be Saturday, November 11, when Indiana University visits Champaign.

This year, Don’t Waste has achieved the following milestones:

• With student volunteers’ help during the basketball season, Illini fans collected a State Farm Center basketball gameday record of 1,280 pounds of recyclables in March.
• Two hydration stations were installed at Memorial Stadium this summer to encourage the use of reusable water bottles during Illini games.
• An additional 140 pounds of plastic was diverted from the New Student Convocation event in August.

Establishing a zero waste culture at the U of I is a top sustainability objective of the Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP). The iCAP is the university’s strategic plan to meet the Climate Leadership Commitments, including becoming carbon neutral as soon as possible and building resilience to climate change in the local community. The data collected from these engagement efforts will guide future recycling infrastructure improvements in university facilities and be used to establish best practices for implementing sustainable habits at campuswide gatherings and unit-level events.

For more information about general campus waste management (how that works/what is recycled) and iCAP progress, contact Daphne Hulse dlhulse2@illinois.edu, 217-333-7550. And keep watching for social media updates and campus recycling reminders on #DontWasteWednesday.

The period to reclaim impounded bicycles from summer 2023 has now passed. We had impounded about 240 bicycles in the summer and we returned 24 bicycles! That is a 10% reclamation rate, as compared to 5% in 2022. This was the least number of abandoned bicycles impounded ever on campus!

All of the unclaimed bicycles are now considered donated. Sarthak Prasad will reach out to Campus Bike Center to let them know that they can start removing these bicycles. Since there are only about 200 unclaimed bicycles, we may not donate them to Working Bikes this year.

An invite was sent to 12 students to register to participate in the first ever "Learn How to Ride" class. See the email below:

Hello,

Hope you are doing well. We have rescheduled the Learn How to Ride a bike class to October 7, 2023! Please respond to this email or register before Friday, September 29, 2023!

Thank you for filling out the Bike Class Form on the Bike at Illinois website. You had mentioned that you would like to take a “Learn How to Ride” class. The University of Illinois is organizing a “Learn How to Ride” class on Saturday, October 7, 2023 from 11 am to 1:30 pm. Please register to participate in this class: https://shorturl.at/gyBQX

This is the first time we are going to organize a class such as this, so please make sure to arrive on time if you are able to participate. This class will be available to you free of cost. The University is covering the cost for contracting the two local League Cycling Instructors to teach this class, the equipment, and logistics to organize this class.

The class will take place at the basketball courts adjacent to the Volleyball courts at the intersection of Stadium Dr and Oak St (opposite to the Nuclear Physics Laboratory). We will provide bicycles for this class, but if you already have a bicycle, please bring it for fitting.

Please fill out the form at your earliest convenience, and let me know if you have any questions. Thank you,
Sarthak

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