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

The Resilience iCAP Team had its November meeting on Wednesday, November 9th, from 11 - 12 PM. The team had presentations from three community representatives about the resilience issues at their cities (Savoy, Champaign, and Urbana). After the brief presentations, the team discussed possible solutions and how the university can help to solve the resilience issues presented. Meeting minutes and presentation slides are attached.  

Below is an email from Daphne regarding waste/energy tracking at Athletics.

Hi Jen,

Yes! I’m attaching the spreadsheet used to generate the graph, as well as the spreadsheets containing the raw data. I’m cc’ing Shreya in this conversation as she has contributed the most to visualizing the waste and recycling data.

For background: Looking at the raw data you will notice that it is separated between frontload and rolloff/swingpan – these are the 3 types of outdoor receptacles we use for landfill and recycling collection (frontload being smallest, swingpan being a little bigger, and rolloff being largest size). They are separated because their collection process is different. Then, we must bring all the data together for metrics like a diversion rate.

Frontload receptacles are lifted, and their contents are dumped into a truck. The frontload receptacle is left in place after, so trucks go around and pick up multiple buildings’ worth of frontload waste (like neighborhood trash trucks). For this reason, we don’t have a perfect understanding of how much waste individually comes from buildings with these receptacles (though the technology does exist for us to eventually understand this better).

Rolloff receptacles are rolled directly onto and off the truck. Some rolloffs have a compactor built within them (State Farm Center, for example). The receptacle is then taken to the Waste Transfer Station, weighed, dumped, and then taken back to its original location.

Swingpan receptacles function just the same as rolloff, the only difference is the smaller size of the receptacle.

I’m attaching a single slide that visualizes the receptacle and accompanying truck, as this is what helped bring it together for me. All three types of receptacles are used for both landfill and recycling collection, it’s just a matter of how much space is outside any given building for a truck to navigate through + how much waste/recycling is expected to be produced from a given building which ultimately determines the type of outdoor receptacle used.

Please let me know if you have any questions!

Thank you,

Daphne

Members of the iCAP Engagement Team met today to discuss our final recommendations for the semester.

Attatched are the meeting minutes.

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?

https://q.sustainability.illinois.edu/redesigning-the-fashion-industry-a-qa-with-mona-fang/

On November 7, UIUC sustainability representatives met and discussed the following:

1. Digital signage rendering — feedback?

   1. Making the tagline “Fighting Illini, Fighting Waste” bigger.

   2. Reducing Coca-Cola script.

   3. Adding logos of iSEE and F&S.

   4. Add Certified Green Event logo?

2. Volunteer sign up sheet — we have reached 49 student volunteers!

   1. Volunteer training — added into the vision and roadmap document.

      1. Daphne (+ potentially F&S interns) will be attending the November 11th game to see how basketball games operate.

3. Event has been advertised on Eweek, iNews, and GradLink as of this Sunday (11-6).

4. YAH Agency: content capture at the basketball game — sending a film crew.

5. State Farm Center: blue bags.

   1. Shawn & Daphne attempting to get blue recycling bags implemented at State Farm Center ahead of the November 14th game (potentially by the November 11th game).

      1. Allow us to benchmark general recycling at a basketball game (we don’t currently have this) vs a highly engaged, recycling-focused event.

6. The basketball game is a Certified Green Event!

   1. Would iSEE able to advertise this?

7. 10 question pre-game trivia: will be posted on the game day app.

8. Post-game feedback questions — reached out to Marty.

9. Solar picnic tables:

   1. Need dimensions from Jake to check with F&S storage space.

   2. Concern: do we know if ARC would even end up approving the design, come spring?

10. OSU MyCup survey results?