All, Starting to slow down a bit. This week’ll be absolutely perfect riding weather: cool but not cold. Still get folks asking for bikes every day—yet to get any 4’ 11” folks or 6’ 3” racing folks for the tall and small bikes we have, though. We’ve got 3 more that should be for sale this week sometime. Soon, we’ll be having the “it’s too cold to ride” conversation with people. No bad weather, just bad gear and so on.

Had a class come by on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to tour the Bike Center and I talked about our operations, history of CBC, and the like. Always nice to get people into our space who might not otherwise have reason to visit.

Last week I talked with Parking about the remainder of the bikes at the warehouse. I’ll make a trip out there this week to see if there’s anything worth our trouble.

A gentleman came in looking for a small pin for his vintage brake levers and was able to find a workable solution in our used parts bins. He generously donated $10 for his 10 minutes of digging while bemoaning that regular bike shops could only offer to replace the brake levers outright. A happy customer who understands and appreciates our value and services—always a good interaction!

This Thursday is the Green Quad Day event, from 10  - 4p. Will be good to get our name out there with other environmental/sustainability efforts on campus.

The numbers:

Visitors: 64
Sales: $1,052.60
Bikes (refurb): 2 for $440
Memberships: 8 for $240
Tires/tubes: 10 for $76

Thanks!

Jacob Benjamin
Campus Bike Center Coordinator

iSEE invites you to a series of events throughout October to increase sustainability in our campus community. Take part in the Waste Reduction Challenge, join us for Green Quad Day (Oct. 7), or check out the first Student Sustainability Summit Research Symposium (Oct. 26)! And don’t miss the Campus Sustainability Celebration on Oct. 20. Find all the events on iSEE’s Sustainability Month Calendar!

October 1–31

Celebrate Campus Sustainability Month in October!

The second iSEE Waste Reduction Challenge starts on October 4! 

The average individual generates around 6 pounds of waste per day, and about 40% of all waste is in the form of food. Each person disposes of approximately a ton of waste per year. Yikes!

Thank you for taking the first step to be more conscious of your personal waste output. Your actions matter. You are helping to combat climate change and to reduce the amount of waste that ends up in our landfills. We have the power to make a change.

How to participate

Sign up today using this form >>>

By registering to participate, you will receive a weekly grid to fill out with the items that you throw in the garbage each day; for example, food, single-use disposable items, paper, and plastics. A point system will be used for you to keep track of your waste. The goal is to earn as few points as possible. There is also the opportunity to subtract points for positive actions. These actions will result in a subtraction from your weekly total.

At the end of each week, upload your grid and reflection to the weekly Google Form.

Click here for more information! 

On Friday, September 24th the Resilience iCAP Team had their first meeting of the semester. The team reviewed the Resilience Charge Letter, discussed updates on the Hazard Mitigation Plan, Biodiversity Plan, and the Assessment of Progress. Meeting minutes are attached.

Student Meeting: Design for America Team Meeting  10/1/2021

Present: Pooja Tetali, Ananya Barman, Kosh Raghavarapu, Anisha Narain, Meredith Moore, Eric Greene, Stacy Gloss

About DFA:

Design for America is national nonprofit and a campus RSO that meets on Sundays to talk about Design Thinking principals. This is one DFA Team out of 5 Teams part of the RSO.  There are 30-ish people w/ a 6 person exec board locally. Exec board helps keep track and teaches design thinking. Interviewing skills. Ideation.  One project was: Racism Un-taught, working with professor to interview RSOs about a standard/playbook/rule book to minimize racism within RSOs. Another was working with Illinois Department of Health App for breastfeeding people. Projects vary between technical and research.

This team meets once a week. They are happy to meet once a week or every 2 weeks. They have a couple hours to respond to emails and put together documents, so a few hours a week each. DFA projects typically last 1 year, academic year through May.

The topics they are interested in are environmental racism, campus/community relations, campus/university effect/impact on communities, environmental science, collection action & collaboration. Two members worked on transportation system mapping in US previously and had been connected to iCAP goals / campus transportation goals.

Potential Project Opportunities:

Initial Research for Environmental Justice Planning.

The initial research will help to inform the planning that goes into developing an Environmental Justice Plan. The project will eventually lead to a road map or planning document to guide the campus EJP.

1. Funding for EJPlans and Implementation
2. What Universities have Environmental Justice Plans?
3. What community EJP’s exist that would be a resource or model for a campus-lead EJP?
4. What Universities initiated Environmental Justice Plans in or for their communities? What are or were the barriers and opportunities for collaboration with their communities?

Green Infrastructure Mapping:

1. Green infrastructure mapping as part of the Green Infrastructure Resilience Goal

Tasks:

Schedule a follow-up meeting and communicate via email between meetings. Students will need to select the project they are interested in and report how they feel they can best contribute to the project(s).

On Friday, October 1 the Zero Waste iCAP Team had their first meeting of the semester! The team discussed progress on last year's recommendations, zero waste initiatives from F&S, and the iCAP Objective Assessment for Zero Waste. Meeting minutes are attached.

SSC received semester report for Spring 2021 for Greener Campus Programs on 10/1/2021. Please see attached. 

SSC received semester report for Spring 2021 for Preventing Window Strike Bird Fatalities with Energy Efficient Window Decals on 9/9/2021. Please see attached. 

SSC received semester report for Spring 2021 for Diversion of Non-Recyclable Plastic using Pyrolysis Process to Produce Fuels for Camps project on 9/3/2021. Please see attached. 

SSC received semester report for Spring 2021 for Valorizing Archived Soild and Long Term Carbon Budgets project on 9/12/2021. Please see attached. 

Meredith Moore, Morgan White and Stacy Gloss met for the weekly check-in on resilience work.

Agenda:

• Review iCAP goals 8.5 & 8.7
• Discuss iCAP objective assessment powerpoints
• Schedule October meetings 

Notes:

• iCAP goal 8.5 – Stacy should reach out to Eric Green and Lana Holden about how students find out about green jobs; what green certifications are known.
• iCAP goal 8.7 –Stacy should reach out to Eric Green to find out about student work on carbon off-sets. Ideas: Consider a white paper/literature review on “local” carbon offsets , or host round table/presentation / symposium with “experts” on local offsets
  • Stacy will read more on Second Nature off-sets / campus carbon calculations
  • 1 MW = 1 REC,  1 off set = 1 ton of CO2e reduced or kept out of atmosphere
  • Read status of the voluntary carbon markets 2021 pdf doc shared from Morgan
• Stacy will post previous meeting notes from Resilience Objective meetings on Sustainability, Vision Zero, and Green Infrastructure
• Cancel the 10/7/2021 meeting due to Green Quad Day, next weekly check-in on 10/14

SSC received final report for Spring 2021 for Local Grains and Locally Processed Foods for Dining Services project on 09/27/2021. Please see attached.