On February 26, 2014 over 100 volunteers collaborated in a competition at a U of I basketball game to divert as much waste as possible from landfill.  Isolated waste bins were changed into recycling stations with new signs for landfill and recycling.   Fans were educated by volunteers about which bin to use.   After the game, participants collected and recycled as much as possible.  Landfilled and recycled materials were weighed and recorded to indicate a diversion rate of 31.5%.

On March 18, 2014 was the first E-cyclemania event as part of Recyclemania at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus.  57 volunteers from numerous student organizations collaborated with Champaign County Bikes.  E-waste was picked up by bike from several building drop-offs points that included Nugent Hall, Daniels Hall, Sherman Hall, The Cohen Center, Orchard Downs, The Bike Shop, and Bousfield Hall.  That material was transported on bike trailers to collection sites located at Allen Hall, Ikenberry Commons, and the ISTC Building in the research park. The event managed to fill two 26 ft. box trucks with electronics for recycling.  The weight of that material will be recorded in the national RecycleMania database.

This Feasibility study considers the potential placement of a Photovoltaic array on the roof of Krannert Center for the Performing Arts (KCPA). The Study was conducted in two phases, the reports of which are included herein. A construction budget of five hundred eighty-five thousand dollars ($585,000), excluding contingencies, was proposed by the Student Sustainability Committee.

Based on shadow studies, it was determined that placement of a photovoltaic array on the roof of the Great Hall would maximize the potential power gain, as compared to other locations at KCPA. However, structural analyses have shown that the roof structure would require strengthening prior to the application of any new load. Additionally, based on its age, it is recommended that the roofing be replaced prior to the installation of a photovoltaic array. Access to the roof is cumbersome, and is also in need of improvement. The opinion of probable construction cost for this associated work exceeds the five hundred eighty-five thousand dollar ($585,000) construction budget. Without considering these associated projects in the payback analysis, the complexities of constructing a PV array on the roof structure diminish the economical effectiveness of a roof mounted PV array as compared to a ground-mounted system, assuming the ready
availability of real estate.

Based on these findings, it is the recommendation of Hanson Professional Services Inc. (Hanson) that a photovoltaic array not be placed on the roof of the Great Hall at KCPA, and that consideration be given instead to directing the available funds to a location that is more readily suited to its construction.

Ken Buenting, Sharon Ball, Eva Sweeney, Morgan Johnston, and Ryan Wild met to review progress on the LED Exit Sign work.  Ken reported great progress with four buildings complete and one in progress: Grainger, RAL, Animal Sciences Lab, and the Engineering Sciences Building.  They are in Turner Hall now.  Just over $24K has been spent so far through the contractor.  They will move on to the Main Library and the Education Building next.

The current implementation process is as follows:

1. Ryan Wild and Morgan Johnston work with others to identify the priority list of buildings.
2. Eva Sweeney will review records to ascertain whether the fixtures are connected to an emergency generator or will need battery backup.
3. Sharon Ball and team will do the initial count of fixtures.
4. Ken Buenting will direct the hired contractor to replace the existing fixtures and provide data sheets for our records.
5. Eva Sweeney and Ryan Wild will identify additional signage installation needs.
6. Ken will direct the F&S electricians to install the additional signs.

Eva had Ken remove Temple Buell Hall from the list because it is being handled through another project.  Also, through other funding, South studio five and seven were completed.

Hi Andrew, Jane, Scott, Rob, and Stephanie,

At the last Sustainability Practitioners discussion, Jack Dempsey asked about a Regional Climate Action Plan.  After that brief discussion, he talked with campus leadership.  Mike DeLorenzo then talked with the “IAC” about the idea.  Reportedly, Laurel Prussing was enthusiastic and the Champaign City Manager liked the idea and wanted to get a little more info.  I do not know if Bill Volk or Deb at RPC have heard of this yet. 

What I’d like to do is meet with the six of us and talk about this idea.  We can flesh out the idea more, develop a list of pros and cons, and consider the different options for moving forward.  Jane and Andrew, would you please let me know if you can and will participate in this discussion?  Scott, can you confirm that you are the right person to include for Urbana?

Thanks!

Morgan

The call included Jim Martinie and Kathy Young with UA Payables, Cindy Klein-Banai, Stephanie Lage, and Morgan Johnston.  Ben McCall, Shelby Egan, and Ginger Valezquez were unable to join the call.

This discussion was started through a group in Chicago looking at the travel policy with Amtrak.  Unlike with airfare it wasn’t giving a preference for Amtrak.  Also, even a higher class than the coach class Amtrak is much less expensive than driving, and people may be more productive on the train.  Are there options and promotional opportunities.  Payables was going to look at it and provide us with an update. 

Policy is set by the Illinois Higher Education Travel Board and it is very difficult to get them to change.  Ginger is the representative for the UI with the Illinois Higher Education Travel Board.  They prescribe the lodging limitations, per diem amount, and travel policies.  Can do procedures and not policies on our side, but they haven’t had much luck with change requests for increasing per diem or lodging limitations.  Cindy said that this would be a little different because we want to ask them to reimburse less than for car travel.

Probably need to focus on what can be done here and what we do have control over.  Providing some information to Amtrak and train travel under make travel arrangements.  We can update the pages on the OBFS page. Payables was really focused on making procedural changes with the web-page – Kathy would like to work with someone to put the information on the website.  Kathy will submit the information for the changes – Cindy will work with them to help with that, with Stephanie.  Stephanie will bring Gary Miller up to speed about the policy issue, for the Green Governing Coordinating Council.  Morgan will get a contact at IDOT in support of Amtrak travel.

They were able to come up with a preliminary report that identifies the instances that someone has driven and been reimbursed for mileage between Urbana and Chicago.  That report needs a little fine tuning – by departments.  We can count and sum the info by department with the details.  They will look at instances between Chicago and Springfield, as well. 

I called DCEO's contact for this program, and her voicemail said to call Brian Cattamay at 312-355-2019.  I left him a voicemail because it is unclear to me whether the funding is still available for our campus.  I also asked Dawn to take a look at the video and estimate or count the number of green nozzles they could install at Dining Services.

From: Johnston, Morgan B

Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2014 10:54 AM
To: 'Amy Liu'
Cc: Burris, Marques Javyn; Bartels, Bart A; Kinley, Kathryn R
Subject: RE: Tap That Signage

Hi Amy,

I think you should ask Marques or Katie for the current account balance for this project (water fountain retrofit).  The CFOP is 1-303692-815100-815184-815RET.  Then, you need to get a vote from the SSC committee to approve the change in scope to reflect the # of glass fillers installed, and give you permission to spend the remaining money on signs.

Once you have SSC permission, then we will talk to the individual facility managers for the buildings, to get their approval of any signage.  At the libraries, for instance, you may be able to put a flyer on their bulletin boards, but not at the actual fountains.

Thanks!

Morgan

There are 48 buildings signed up.  There will be a luncheon on April 21 during Earth Week on campus.  The lunch is for celebrating the participants, and for them to invite potential participants to join us and help expand the program.

From: Dorothy Ann David
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2014 3:33 PM
To: DeLorenzo, Michael T
Cc: Rob Kowalski; Joan Walls
Subject: Climate Change Plan

Mike - I don't think that I ever followed up on last month's request about our interest in participating in a discussion about a Regional Climate Change Plan.  I have asked Rob Kowalski, Assistant Director of Planning and Development to serve as the City's rep on any group you choose to convene.  I have copied Rob so you have his email address. 

The University of Wisconsin  in Madison has a program to reduce polystyrene waste.  They reached out to Ben McCall to get a letter of support.  Meanwhile, Bart Bartels, Seth Rients, and Shantanu Pai suggested we could start a similar program now, rather than wait to know if Wisconsin's funding comes through.  Ben suggested the following questions to consider as a starting point.

1. Where can we set up local "staging areas" in the relevant buildings?
2. Who can move things from the staging areas to a central location for bundling?  Students?
3. Can we identify "local" (St. Louis, Chicago, Indy) companies such as Sigma that would want these?
4. How can we arrange to truck them to those companies?  [I wonder if we could even send them back on the trucks that drop off chemical orders?]

The rennovation of the State Farm Center (previously known as the Assembly Hall) will seek LEED Gold certification.  One item that this includes is the prerequisite that the building have indoor recycling bins placed throughout the facility.  This will be a nice follow up to the first Zero Waste Game Day event our campus held in Spring 2014.

The greenhouse is built, the bin is constructed, bedding logistics are in place, and food waste collection should begin the week after spring break. Ramp up to about 150-200 lbs of food waste processing per week should be complete in about 4-5 months. For this bin and the way it fits into the SSF management plan, we’d never process more than 250-300# of actual food waste a week. This would make for a max range of 7,000-14,000 lbs of food waste processed per year (47 weeks, we wouldn’t collect waste during Christmas and Spring Break). 

If there is any confusion about this PILOT vermicomposting project I’d like to clarify it here, because I have gotten a few requests from outside sources about taking in outside food waste (word spreads quickly). This particular unit is only meant as a pilot demonstration to prove this can be done on a larger (potential campus wide) scale. This 5x16 unit we have is an example of one part of what could be a much larger facility. However, if this is successful I would like to see that facility be something that the SSF does not manage, and ideally in another specifically built piece of infrastructure to house a larger scale process. The greenhouse also serves as our transplant production house. Between the existing unit and managing the transplant production system, the SSF has more than it can already incorporate into its existing management.

That being said, once the system is up and running, we’d love to showcase this to any number of relevant parties and incorporate the data into any Zero Waste policy the campus has. As well as any other sustainability metrics the campus tracks.

See Daily Illini article about the e-waste event.

E-Cyclemania

On March 18th from 2pm to 6pm the Urbana-Champaign Campus will host an e-waste collection event as part of Recyclemania, a national competition to minimize waste and reduce the amount of material going to landfill.  On that date there will be three collection sites including the Allen Hall turn-around, Ikenberry Commons at Euclid Avenue, and a vehicle drop-off behind the ISTC Building in the research park. Personal electronics will be accepted free of charge including anything that has a plug or runs on batteries.  However the event can’t accept university owned inventory.  

In an effort to reduce traffic congestion that is sometimes created by such an event, volunteers will help pick material using bicycles and carts (E-cyclers).  Buildings participating in the event can begin collecting e-waste on the morning of March 18th.  The E-cyclers will pick up that material and transport it to one of the collection sites.  E-waste that is too heavy to transport by cart should be delivered to the ISTC vehicle drop-off.

All e-waste collected will be recycled by a vendor that is R2 and E-steward certified.  Weight of the material collected will be reported as part of the national Recyclemania competition.  Additional information can be found here.

View the facebook page here.

If you have questions about the event or would like to volunteer, please contact Bart Bartels atbbartel@illinois.edu or 217-244-7572. 

Hello Ofelia,

It would be great if you would do some research into the most effective conservation tips, and select the best based on that research.  However, if you do not have time, I would like to see these three: turn your computers off at night, consolidate coffee makers and mini-fridges, and as always turn off the lights.

Thanks,

Morgan

-----Original Message-----

From: Ofelia Rodriguez

Sent: Sunday, March 09, 2014 5:33 PM

To: Johnston, Morgan B

Subject: Illini Energy Website

Hello Morgan,

I am working on the Illini Energy website and am in charge of having energy saving tips. I wanted to ask for your opinion on what type of information would be useful or would be best to have on the website. We have a long list of energy saving tips, but wanted to focus on top 3 tips to put not the website.

Look forward to hearing from you!

Best,

Ofelia Rodriguez

Collin has been involved in this project from the very beginning, so he should be involved in any further discussions on this project. I really want to ensure proper code compliance on this since it was not originally built nor inspected to verify adherence to the International Residential Code or the NEC. We are trying to renovate it to be considered to be a code-compliant single family residence. - Craig Grant

ECO OLYMPICS
University of Illinois
Energy Conservation Competition
Think Globally....Act Locally!

ECO-OLYMPICS is an energy competition between 20+ residence halls on campus. 

Our goal is to engage, educate, and motivate students/employees/professors to change their behavior, and have a good time while doing it.

Eco-Olympics is part of a nationwide program called Campus Conservation Nationals 2014, as well as a mini Big Ten competition FMI: www.competetoreduce.org/ccn.  Trophies and prizes will be given to the successful halls.

What you can do to help:

• We need Building captains to organize a team of students to educate, promote, market, and motivate their residence hall.
• Each team will post flyers, hold meetings and create their own winning strategy designed to gain participation throughout the competition and save electricity.
• Register and put your team together (all team members need to register )
• Compete for coveted trophy and prizes 
• Make a difference in the world creating behavioral change for a better future.

You and your team members play a critical role in this incredible opportunity to make a difference in campus energy usage. 

This is the inaugural competition, so we will be creating a yearly tradition to leave behind and impact future students here at UIUC. The participants will also be able to include this on their resume as leadership, volunteering, team building and/or group participation. 

There will be meetings in March leading up to the competition that is scheduled for March 30-April 22, these meetings will train participants, go over the guidelines, and assign buildings to each team.

Thank you for your interest and participation in Eco Olympics, a Great opportunity making a difference locally and globally.

If you have any question I can be reached at gfoote2@illinois.edu

Competition Director

Paul Foote

In March 2014, F&S applied for funding from ICECF to support additional T12-T8 lighting retrofits.  The amount requested is $88,127.00.

• Structure
  
  • 10 students, 6 faculty, 6 staff
  • $1.1 million to distribute among student and faculty projects
    • Cleaner Energy Technologies fee
    • Sustainable Campus Environment fee
  • 4 Subcommittees
    • Executive
    •  Bylaws
    • Fines
    • Marketing
  • 6 topics – include more community input
    • Land
    • Energy
    • Food and waste
    • Education
    • Water
    • Transportation
• Strategic Impact
  
  • ICAP concerns  - fund projects that help UIUC reach ICAP goals
  • Projects that have no other method of funding.
• Process
  
  • Step 1: ideas get turned into specific requests and goals, submitted to SSC in application with project abstract and approximate funding needed.
  • Applications are reviewed and selected based on strategic impact goals, get invited to step 2…
  • Step 2: Specific logistics figured out, feasibility reports made
  • Step 3: Entire SSC votes
• SSC allocations
• Future goals
  
  • More student engagement
  • Expand outreach efforts
  • Get more student-driven project applications
• Some projects/organizations SSC has funded…
  
  • Green Observer
  • Bike Shop
  • Solar decathlon house