You are here

Zero Waste iCAP Team (Ongoing)

Recent Project Updates

  • 2/19/2024

    The Zero Waste iCAP Team Met on 2/19/2024 to discuss initiatives regarding environmentally preferred procurement, updates on the university's participation with Coca-Cola buyback, and recyclopedia feedback.

  • 1/26/2024

    The Zero Waste iCAP Team met on 1/26/24 to review iCAP objectives and the statuses of our focused projects. Thurman Etchison and Daphne Hulse provided updates on Housing Recycling and Recyclopedia.

Description

This team is focused on how to best maintain and improve the University’s food procurement, purchasing, waste management, and recycling programs. The group will work to implement a Zero Waste movement (like that described in the iCAP), which will require a “whole system” approach to resource management that implicates purchasing, maximizes recycling, minimizes waste, reduces consumption and ensures that products are made to be reused, repaired, or recycled back into the system. This system will reduce greenhouse gases by saving energy by reducing energy consumption associated with extracting, processing, and transporting raw materials and waste, and by reducing and eventually eliminating the need for landfills and incinerators.

This group will address the University’s progress on meeting the iCAP goals in regards to purchasing, waste, and recycling. It will look to help further the progress of the iCAP’s targets of a Zero-Waste campus policy. The group will approach this by working to make campus purchasing entities responsible for costs of the disposal of the products consumed and by avoiding the purchasing of environmentally irresponsible products and corporations (based on carbon and other environmental indicators).

Goals from the iCAP that this team will look to take to improve and take to the next level are:

  • Increase the rate of recycling for non-construction and demolition waste from its current rate of 50%.
  • Not only improve construction and demolition waste recycling for LEED projects, but smaller ones on campus as well.

(This team was previously known as the Purchasing, Waste, and Recycling (PWR) SWATeam.)

Background

This team focuses on the objectives found in Chapter 5 of the iCAP 2020:

5.1 Create sustainable procurement reporting guidelines and increase compliance to 100% of business managers through training and outreach by FY24.

5.2 Reduce the total campus waste going to landfills from 5,049 tons in FY19 to 4,544 tons or less in FY24, which is a decrease of at least 10%.

5.2.1 Install appropriate waste collection infrastructure throughout the University District, with new indoor bins placed in at least 150 buildings by FY24.

5.3 Establish a culture of reuse, with two major campuswide zero-waste events using durable goods and composting in FY22, four in FY23, six in FY24, and eight in FY25.

5.3.1 Develop a comprehensive Zero Waste messaging campaign by FY21 and achieve a cumulative total of 10,000 “Use the Bin” pledges by FY24.

5.4 Promote food scraps reduction on campus through a behavior change campaign, and tracking and recovery of surplus food for donation, with at least five new areas tracking and reporting their food waste by FY22.

5.5 Develop a detailed comprehensive plan including implementation and operational costs/benefits to sustainably dispose of all food scraps and other organics by FY24, and fully implement the plan by FY33.

5.6 Increase the use of local food to 35% by FY30.

5.6.1 Implement Food Literacy Project by FY24 by tracking carbon, nitrogen, and water footprints for food items in campus dining halls. 

5.7 Establish a green cleaning program that meets LEED v.4 requirements by FY24.

No description has been provided yet.

Project Team

  • Primary Contact:

    Olivia Pazerunas

    Project Leader:

    Daphne Hulse

    Team Members:

    • Daphne Hulse
    • Thurman Etchison
    • Aaron Finder
    • Tim Knox
    • Nishant Garg
    • Joy Scrogum
    • Jenna Schaefer
    • Joy Scrogum
    • Dominika Szal
    • Pete Varney
    • Sakshi Vaya
    • Shreya Mahajan

    Prior Contacts:

    • Alexa Smith
    • Yuanhui Zhang
    • Clara Bosak-Schroeder
    • Avery Maloto
    • Tim Knox
    • Mike Olinger
    • Sarah Shoaff
    • Sydney Trimble
    • Nikki Palella
    • Joe Bradley
    • Justin Holding
    • Sarah Shoaff
    • Sydney Trimble
    • Tim Stark
    • Clara Bosak-Schroeder
    • Julija Sakutyte
    • Cassidy Steel
    • Leah Courtney
    • Maddy Liberman
    • Caitlin Aylmer
    • Shantanu Pai
    • Brajendra Kumar Sharma
    • Robert McKim
    • Leon Liebenberg
    • Marya Ryan
    • Emily Recupido
    • Manying Zhang

Dates

  • Started March 12, 2014
    Started by Ben McCall

Themes