From: Hulse, Daphne Lauren
Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2023 10:18 AM
To: Vaya, Sakshi <svaya2@illinois.edu>; Kim, Hannah <hannahk9@illinois.edu>
Subject: FW: Inquiry about Potential Partnership with Composting

Hi Hannah & Sakshi,

If your project receives funding from SSC, this may be an option for where to dispose of the collected food waste in the union/residence halls.

Thank you!
Daphne

From: Schroeder, Claire Nicole <claire27@illinois.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2023 10:15 AM
To: Hulse, Daphne Lauren <dlhulse2@illinois.edu>
Subject: Inquiry about Potential Partnership with Composting

Hello, 

I hope you are doing well. My name is Claire Schroeder, and I am a student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I am writing on behalf of https://www.illinoisenactus.com/

, a 501(c)3 social entrepreneurship organization that works on projects with the intent of creating sustainable solutions that address needs in the community. Currently, my team and I are looking to start a new initiative centered around composting and educating the fellow student body and community on its social and environmental importance. Because of this, we are looking for partners that will work with us to share their food waste with us so that we can work together to create a healthy form of fertilizer through the composting process. Would you have an interest in working with us by contributing your waste or the waste that you deal with from the UIUC dining halls to aid in our composting process? Would you like to positively contribute to our project, if it gets sourced officially in Enactus, so that we can together create this compost product? If so, please reply to this email and I would be glad to talk to you more about the project. Please get back to me at your earliest convenience, thank you!

Best,

Claire Schroeder

Hi Morgan!

It's Brandon--blast from the past!....

In the working world, I'm at Nori, a carbon removal marketplace.  We are working on cutting-edge carbon removal methods and we are looking for relevant folks to interview.  We're looking for anyone who buys carbon credits, especially for their organization.  Do you or anyone you know jump out as a good fit?  Thanks in advance for any info.  And I hope Spring is treating you well there!  Warm regards,

-Brandon Bowersox-Johnson

----------------------------------------

Hi Brandon!!

Glad to hear from you!..... 

Would the interview be with you, or someone in your team?

Thanks,

Morgan

-------------------------------------

Hi Morgan,

The interview would be with me along with our co-founder, Alexsandra.  It would be fun to see you! 

-Brandon

Greetings Carbon Offsets Workshop Attendees, and those looking to stay engaged with us!,

Thank you so much for your participation at our workshop on Tuesday April 18th 3-4pm EST, and thank you as well to those who couldn’t attend but are looking to follow-up on the information we shared. We are grateful for the variety of perspectives represented in the meeting space, and the questions and comments we were able to address in the time we had. Moving forward, we’re looking to get your feedback on if there is a collective appetite for diving further into this topic, and what resources are still needed. 

Please feel free again to email Meredith directly with your questions and to get involved directly with our Carbon Offsets Network, C2P2 Initiative, and advisory council....

For those of you looking to gain support with your climate action and resilience work in the southeast...

Please visit this link to share your thoughts and feedback on this workshop by Friday April 28th. Please see links to resources included in the survey.

View Meredith Leigh’s presentation linked here. 

View our recorded zoom meeting video here. 

See below our Q&A of questions and comments institutions and attendees had:

Q&A with Meredith Leigh:

Sandra Van Travis, Morehouse College’s Environmental Health and Safety Officer asks:

Please send information on how to calculate offsets using trees.

Campuses have hired arborists to determine sample areas and measure trees. These measurements require tree height, diameter at breast height, and species identification. Arborists are positioned to do this work. 

If hiring an arborist is not possible, new remote sensing technology providers offer phone apps that can be used by students or faculty to calculate tree data and categorize by species. One company in particular is interested in partnering with HEIs. If you are interested in connecting with this company, email Meredith. 

Christina Kwauk Asks:

I am curious if any of the members of the working group are familiar with carbon offsets that go toward non-mitigation activities but rather to climate adaptation activities that may benefit climate resilience outcomes of environmental justice communities (i.e. instead of carbon removed, what about respiratory illnesses averted/reduced?). This may be totally out of scope for carbon offsets and this workshop, but I wanted to join to listen for these connections today. 

This is a great question and a badly needed type of offset! Right now these kinds of values are considered “co-benefits” of carbon offsets, and people don’t put a dollar value on them like they do on MTCDE reductions, but offset projects are more attractive to buyers when they list these kinds of co-benefits. Campus participation in the Offset Network is a great way to develop projects uniquely suited to your campus, especially when your goals are to serve co-benefits and you have less pressure to just produce quantifiable offsets. An example of this is Clarkson ISE’s recently avoided forest conversion project through the Offset Network. Their main goals were to create student involvement in forest inventory and carbon project development, and to protect a piece of land and the endangered species of turtle that lives on it. The offsets generated from the project are small, and will count toward Clarkson’s Scope 3 emissions, but the co-benefits were what really made the project worthwhile for them. 

Dr. Maria Boccalandro asks:

If you are in a community college setting where you work with tax payer’s money how do you justify buying these credits? I think narrative matters... are there any best practices for community colleges you can share?

A great question, and one that Second Nature is still working on as we diversify the institutions we support. I think the key to this is transparency- communicating to stakeholders both the intentions of the offset purchase and its impact. To this end, it would be advisable to make space for community input when the school develops its offsets strategy. This way taxpayers can provide feedback on whether they see value in the college purchasing offsets as a way of becoming climate neutral, and if so, what types of projects would feel valuable to them. Furthermore I think engagement in the Offset Network, where faculty and students can create local projects with high co-benefits would be a good fit for community colleges. The projects can be designed for community involvement and high community co-benefits so that the expense of engaging is co-owned and the positive impacts are felt beyond campus. 

Thank you all again, and we look forward to reviewing your feedback!,

Blythe Coleman-Mumford (she/her/hers)

-----------------------------------

Hi Morgan, Madhu, and Elizabeth –

Given that we have been discussing offsets and Second Nature’s role, I thought you might find the slides linked below (Meredith Leigh’s presentation, highlighted) of interest. They provide an overview of the topic of offsets and several examples of what various HEIs are doing in this space.

Notably, slides 10-11 indicate that C sequestered in trees can be removed from total campus emissions as a “sink” in SIMAP. As you know, sinks are not the same as offsets because they do not require additionality. We know C sequestration for Trelease Woods and have the data to determine C sequestered by campus trees. So I think we should consider listing them as sinks. We could also consider other campus lands where land use/land cover might support C sequestration (cover cropping?).

Based on the public SIMAP report (here), we have reported 0 sinks/non-additional sequestration in the past. When will we complete the next SIMAP report?

Thanks,

Jen

--------------------------------------

Thanks for sharing this Jen. This is helpful to have. I will look over the slides. Can you also send me the write up by Warren Lavey.

We should plan on discussing this at our next CS team meeting unless there is urgency to discuss it sooner

Best

Madhu

-------------------------------------

Hi Madhu,

It is not urgent; we can discuss at the next CS team meeting.

The Resilience Team will be discussing the offset policy letter at today’s meeting. I will share once it is finalized. The law student working with Warren presented her findings about the MOU and paths forward at the April meeting. Notes can be found here:

https://icap.sustainability.illinois.edu/project-update/resilience-icap-team-april-meeting

Jen

Sarthak & I met on 4/24/2023 to work on the BFU application. 

The current version of the log we are using is attached below.

Presentations given during the lunch sessions for each grade in the library. Franklin STEAM hosts sustainability speakers each April in honor of Earth Month.

Thanks so much for coming!!!

We really appreciate your time and energy today speaking to Franklin's future "world rescuers."

I know you cannot attend our Open House this May 11th but do consider if you would like to table at our fall Open House on September 14th.

We really appreciated your clear and important messages.

Zanne Newman

Magnet Site Coordinator

Franklin STEAM Academy

This morning, I met with Ben Isabel, the Chief of Staff for State Senator Laura Fine.  Ben is moving forward looking for grant money to fund our project at UIUC.  He is talking to the Department of Transportation which we both think should be interested given the interest of President Biden with more EVs.

Ben hopes to hear something positive within a week or so.

Regards,

George

---------------------------------

Good Morning,

I am forwarding the message I received over the weekend from George.  Cheri, as you have had discussions with George on moving forward with this, who does he consider to be his campus partner when he refers to “our project at UIUC”  Is this research park?   The original turbine on campus was accepted as a donation through isee, but we (Paul Foote and Frank Colacicco) discussed the condition of the unit, challenges and costs as excessive.   Initially, a SSC application was also submitted and not funded in our efforts.

As George is working earnestly in securing funding I am concerned if he is accurately communicating a University commitment / partnership.

Best,
Tim

Sarthak + Morgan,

Please see the attached PDF. It includes all iCAP and related activities for 2022-2023.

We have included direct and indirect impacts such as those originating from: active IAQ legislation, public awareness and concerns, capacity and capital building, workforce equity initiatives, violence prevention and cross-disciplinary collaboration between public health officials and building designers.

See you shortly, Sterling

Hi Daphne,

Please see my request in the subject line. 

Also, based on our costs, I’m looking at about $62 a SF.  So for a 12’ by 8’ installation, we’re looking at roughly $6,000 total.  Given that they will have to install up higher, and the installation of panels might not be directly mounted, but more of a strut system, braced on either side of the metal shed, I’d just go a bit higher to $8000 for an ask.

I ran this past ARC, and we didn’t have any issues with this idea.  We just want to be involved with approval.  Everything that I talked about this morning seemed good with them.

Thanks!   

Brent Lewis

---------------------

Hi Brent,

Thank you for this cost estimate. Please see the attachment for the slide.

Thank you,
Daphne

On April 22, from 10AM-12PM, the Land Conservation Foundation is hosting a hike at Brady Woods Nature Preserve. 

More information can be found on the attached flyer. 

Provided a general overview of zero waste at the university: challenges, successes, and opportunities.

Attachment from Warren Lavey.