2021 Recognition from Tree Campus Higher Education
Attached is a letter from the president of the Arbor Day Foundation congratulating our campus for once again receiving recognition as a Tree Campus Higher Education institution.
Attached is a letter from the president of the Arbor Day Foundation congratulating our campus for once again receiving recognition as a Tree Campus Higher Education institution.
Bike Day 2021 was organized on September 14, 2021! Here are some of the numbers from the events from Bike Day 2021.
Bike to Work Day:
Light the Night:
General feedback was very positive from the campus community members. Several mentioned that holding these events in September felt like a welcoming event and gave the returning and new students an opportunity to explore the campus and community on bike and learn about the bike program at the beginning of school year!
The Bike Month Planning team and Light the Night Planning teams are considering organizing both of these events in the fall semester going forward.
President of "Students for Environmental Concerns", Alec Van Patten, reached out to propose a green rooftop project for a building on campus. Morgan White replied suggesting the Newmark Civil Engineering Lab first floor roof as the building for the project. A meeting to discuss further details was scheduled between Morgan White, Alec Van Patten, Betry Liggett, and Brent Lewis.
Picture of the Newmark Civil Engineering Lab roof is attached.
Today, Madhu Khanna, Interim Director for the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment distributed the following charge letter to the members of the iCAP Transportation team.
Today, Madhu Khanna, Interim Director for the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment distributed the following charge letter to the members of the iCAP Energy team.
iSEE's Interim Director Madhu Khanna sent the Zero Waste iCAP Team a formal charge letter on Tuesday, September 14 detailing their campus sustainability duties this academic year. Full letter is attached.
iSEE's Interim Director Madhu Khanna sent the Engagement iCAP Team a formal charge letter on Tuesday, September 14 detailing their campus sustainability duties this academic year. Full letter is attached.
Charge letter from Interim Director Madhu Khanna to the Land and Water iCAP Team for the 2021-2022 academic year
iSEE's Interim Director Madhu Khanna sent the Resilience iCAP Team a formal charge letter on Tuesday, September 14 detailing the team's responsibilities for the upcoming year. The letter is attached.
Scott Tess, at the City of Urbana presented the results of an analysis of tree canopy as it related to environmental justice at the Sustainability Advisory Commission meeting for the City of Urbana. Follow the link below for the results!
https://www.urbanaillinois.us/node/9608
From: Hiser, Daniel William <dwhiser@illinois.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2021 9:25 AM
To: Trimble, Syd <sydneyt2@illinois.edu>; Varney, Peter W <pvarney@illinois.edu>
Subject: RE: Sensor Pilot Update?
*Update
I don’t have access to the app that would allow me to program the RFID tags. The tags were purchased from atlasRFIDstore.com and the watch that is supposed to do something with them is SLS RFID Solutions www.slsrfid.com. I took a minimal amount of time to try to piece those clues together with no success and have not returned to the subject. The system is still just a pilot and will remain as such until we have a dedicated Zero Waste Coordinator.
The arm system on our truck had the ARM400 and power cable go bad on it so between calls with loadman to diagnose the issue and for them to finally get us the parts resulted in a 3-month lapse in data and the parts are evidently not covered under warranty (not that it's significant other than I think they should be) The system itself when working “properly” requires frequent calibration and it “learns” the driver. This is not good for us as drivers change and the results are frequent negative loads and misreadings.
I think you can get data from these trucks to an extent, but at the same time I would be hesitant to use it as a method to charge customers or with great certainty know the weights are accurate. At this time we are not equipped to consistently troubleshoot the system or have garage staff on standby to fix issues with the system as they arise. Long story short, it's almost good at what it's supposed to do but it will require more babysitting than I am willing to put into it at this time.
Thank you,
Dan Hiser
F&S Fleet Operations
Direct (217) 300-8545
From: Sydney Trimble <sydneyt2@illinois.edu>
Sent: Friday, September 10, 2021 2:22 PM
To: Hiser, Daniel William <dwhiser@illinois.edu>; Varney, Peter W <pvarney@illinois.edu>
Subject: Fwd: Sensor Pilot Update?
Sounds like we gotta talk about this pretty soon. Dan, hopefully you got the time to come up with an update on this?
Best,
Syd
From: Janssen, April Lynn <alj5@illinois.edu>
Date: Fri, Sep 10, 2021 at 1:55 PM
Subject: Sensor Pilot Update?
To: Trimble, Syd <sydneyt2@illinois.edu>
Cc: Samaras, Zach <zsamaras@illinois.edu>
Hi Sydney,
I hope this new semester and planning for your October audit is going great!
Quick question for you, we know from Shantanu (and keep referencing admirably) that F&S is/was implementing a six-month pilot program with weighing sensors installed on the lift arms a waste hauling truck, and that the weight recording, paired with the bar codes on each dumpster, enabled the University to track the weight of material collected from each dumpster. You know this story.
The point - could you provide us a brief update on how that’s going? Is the pilot over or is this now a standard practice? Is it Sensoneo technology or another? I definitely want to stop by next time I am in Champaign and see how this all works 😊 We just spoke with a hauler on that services a university here in Chicago and they could definitely benefit from this technology.
Enjoy your weekend!
April
APRIL JANSSEN MAHAJAN
Sustainability Specialist
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Prairie Research Institute
Illinois Sustainable Technology Center
217-244-0469 | alj5@illinois.edu
www.istc.illinois.edu
Under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act any written communication to or from university employees regarding university business is a public record and may be subject to public disclosure.
Reduce Energy Use on Campus By Going ‘Green’
The start of the semester is the perfect time to "green" our campus environment! Visit the Certified Greener Campus Programs page to learn about simple steps students, faculty, and staff can take to improve the sustainability of their workspaces, activities, and living environments through the Certified Green Office, Certified Green Events, and Certified Green Chapter programs.
Facilities & Services and iSEE have also developed a Greener Labs Inventory Toolkit to help analyze the energy used by lab equipment and identify opportunities for more sustainable lab practices. Together, all of these programs support the Illinois Climate Action Plan's goal of reducing energy consumption and promoting campus sustainability!
Throughout the summer of 2021, I (Kimmy Chuang, iSEE intern, supervised by Meredith Moore) accomplished the following tasks to further the Environmental Justice Plan. Relevant documents documents attached.
1. Compile contact information for focus groups
Number and type of contacts were organized into the following:
Contacts were primarily found through Internet searches. Many of the groups were identified as relevant during Environmental Justice Committee meetings. Where possible or necessary, I’ve included notes and additional links.
2. Research other EJ plans to draft focus group questions
I drafted possible questions for focus group interviews through what I learned from the following EJ or similar Climate Justice Plans:
City of Providence’s Climate Justice Plan
Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO)
National City Health and Environmental Justice Element (San Diego County, CA)
3. Compile contact information of other municipalities with EJ plans
For the plans I reviewed above, I collected contact information for each municipality into a spreadsheet. The EJ Committee suggested that we reach out to other municipalities that had successfully written EJ plans to inform our process.
4. Review local engagement efforts to identify salient local environmental issues
Meredith and I’s original goal for the focus groups was to identify 4-5 of the most salient environmental issues in our community that our plan should address.These are issues that have been identified multiple times during EJ Committee discussions or through my research:
Through my research, I identified four local public engagement efforts that could be relevant for our EJ plan:
Champaign County Community Health Plan 2021-2023
Storm Water Management Plan
Champaign County Soil and Water Conservation District
Urbana Comprehensive Plan
Here are ideas from the iCAP as it was listed in the Appendix “Acknowledgements for future considerations” that may be relevant for EJ:
5. Start conversations with other community members about EJ
Other than the Resilience iCAP Team and the EJ Committee, Meredith and I met with the following community members about EJ:
Gabe Lewis (Planner at CCRPC)
Jessica Lehmkuhl, James Corbin II (Sustainability Advisory Commission)
Cassie Carroll
Met over Zoom about Cassie’s expertise in interviews/focus groups. The following are notes from our discussion:
In this section, I will summarize what I had hoped to accomplish this summer, why we weren’t able to do so, and questions to consider as the EJ Plan moves forward.
Initially, I had planned to conduct focus groups this summer and analyze the results. However, after discussions with Meredith and the EJ Committee, we decided to delay the focus groups until we had more thorough knowledge about the best way to conduct them. The following are questions we have in mind, but aren’t sure how to proceed.
1. Scope of the EJ Plan
2. Vulnerability Assessments
3. Possible funding
4. Ownership of the EJ Committee
This update is also attached as a report and was sent to Stacy Gloss, a member of the Resilience iCAP Team, who will be leading the EJ efforts this Fall.
Following the completion of iWG assessment for ZW003 GreenerOffice Delivery Service Enrollment, the recommendation was transmitted to Dr. Madhu Khanna at iSEE.
See iWG assessment of ZW003 - GreenerOffice Delivery Service Enrollment attached.
See iCAP Team Recommendation ZW003 - GreenerOffice Delivery Service Enrollment here.
Following the completion of iWG assessment for ZW002 Join NERC Government Recycling Demand Champions, the recommendation was transmitted to Brad Henson and Aaron Finder at the UIUC Purchasing Office.
See iWG assessment of ZW002 - Join NERC Government Recycling Demand Champions attached.
See iCAP Team Recommendation ZW002 - Join NERC Government Recycling Demand Champions here.
“... We have 12 registered teams so far.
The registration deadline is Sept. 20...
We have seen an uptick in visitors to the competition website. Last week we were up from around 50 visitors in the first week of the semester to 2000 visitors in week 3.
But, those numbers have not translated to an increase in registrations.
We also have ads in The Daily Illini and on digital advertisement boards around campus. The Daily Illini last week reported 600 visitors a day to our digital ad.
Students will also be bombarded with social media messages this week. Illinois Public Affairs are doing that for us…”
-Leon Liebenberg (09/12/2021)
Teaching Associate Professor |
Attached are the charge letters sent to each of the iCAP Team members, on September 10 by iSEE interim director, Dr. Madhu Khanna.
SSC received a semesterly report for Spring 2021 for the NSRC Composting project on 9/9/2021. Please see attached.
iSEE produced a video to promote Bike to Work Day and Light the Night 2021 on Tuesday, September 14, 2021.
See the video here Bike Day 2021 on September 14 - Bike to Work Day and Light the Night!
Please see the attached newsletter for both August and September updates from the EPA's SmartWay program.