On October 10, UIUC sustainability representatives met and discussed the following:

Attendance: Daphne Hulse, Shreya Mahajan, Thurman Etchison, Dave Guth, Jen Fraterrigo, Sarthak Prasad

Agenda:

1. Weekly calls with Coca-Cola will be changing times to either 12:00pm, 1:00pm, or 2:30pm. Based on the poll Meredith sent, it’s looking like 12:00-12:30pm allows the most members to join.

2. Updated Box folder documents — make sure to check out the Zero Waste Basketball Game Vision + Roadmap!

3. 10-5-22 Discovery Call with the YAH Agency — YAH Agency is helping Coca-Cola put together a comprehensive Don’t Waste Campaign for campus. We talked through some of their questions on the last Wednesday call. If we have any additional context or information we want to provide them, we will need to do so by this Tuesday 10-11-22.

4. Jake has provided us with the updated Don’t Waste logos — the high res versions will be added to Box once we approve.

5. Meeting minutes of past meetings are available in the Box folder.

6. Marty Kaufmann t-shirt/bin update — talked to Coca-Cola about the t-shirts and bins for State Farm Center for November 14. This is already on their radar; they are talking to their ad agency about t-shirts for volunteers.

7. What would we like to put on the agenda for the Wednesday 10-12-22 call?

   1. Our sustainability funds:

      1. T-shirts — who will be funding?

      2. Who is funding the YAH Agency involvement?

   2. Vision and roadmap — need more specific details (who is doing what, and by when?)

      1. Defining Coca-Cola’s role in this event.

      2. Determining details from DIA/Marty.

      3. Pushing for a State Farm Center tour.

8. Jen: Ohio State MyCup Program — are we interested in pursuing something similar?

• Jen: MyCup program — initial thoughts?

  • Dave: OSU had a simple model (to not charge people for using a reusable vessel)

    • Vendors would have a really tough time

    • Nor do we have the Coke Freestyle infrastructure everywhere like OSU (we do have it in the Quad Shop, but not in the food court yet). Every vendor has a different contract with different requirements

    • Nor sure about the free system, given that these vendors make their money on beverages (margins are tight to begin with)

  • Jen: there is the potential to design a program that was more paletable to retailers/vendors.

  • Dave: tracking vendors is also a challenge

    • Restrictions that hurt the bottom line would make it hard to bring in qualified vendors that are interested

  • Thurman: it seems like OSU has not had much success. At this point they are funding free drinks without seeing the results they want to achieve

    • Have to be financially solvent, so a bunch of free drinks may not work for us

    • More inclined to get behind something that allows freshman get reusable bottles (and containers) and having a marketing campaign behind getting them acclimated to that

  • Jen: agree with the idea that OSU has demonstrated the success. No numbers to say much, except for how much money they have invested in

  • Thurman: I think OSU’s idea was to just give it shot. Which is ok, but they aren’t achieving their goals.

  • Jen: alternative reusable bottle program? Student Activities did this in the past. Didn’t do it this year because there was no funds for it. Seen programs where you pay for a cup, which then comes with a huge discount or so many refills. To Dave and Thurman: is it worth the time to look into this, or a non-starter?

  • Thurman: onboard with finding a different approach. Speaking for himself, but thinking a discount for bringing in a reusable could work (could still cover the cost). Surprised OSU didn’t see traffic driven where this program was implemented. But accepts that it is hard to track that.

  • Dave: agrees with Thurman about the discount idea. harder with the union, because there are a bunch of private vendors involved. All the OSU iterations seemed like throwing money at wall to see what stuck

Provided a basic overview of zero waste objectives and initiatives at the university, the waste management process, and the lifecycle of a plastic bottle

The follow is a MassMail sent by Dr. Ehab Kamarah.

On October 5, UIUC sustainability representatives met with Coca-Cola and discussed the following:

Attendance: Jake Slager, Daphne Hulse, Brette Bennett, Greg Grantham, Kendall Chadwick, Jeff Holman, Meredith Moore, Shawn Patterson, Cole Kouvaris, Sarah Carten, Thurman Etchison, Shreya Mahajan, Sean Chance, Jen Fraterrigo

• You Are Here (YAH) Agency: leading the campaign around Don’t Waste, which will be broader than just cans and bottles.
• Jake sent Daphne the updated digital signage with the new logo.
  • Daphne has added to Box.
• Daphne + Meredith need to determine which department needs how many bins. We will review quantities with Jake. Coca-Cola will pay for them this time around. Some of them can be used for the upcoming Zero Waste Basketball Game. Next week Jake wants to talk about sustainability audit from Circular Solutions
• Jake would like to move the meeting up. Meredith will check with Morgan and Jen about their schedules.
• Make sure to add Tony to the Box folder. He had helped distribute signage in the past.
• YAH: campus ambassador work with Coca-Cola. Brought in to help support the Don’t Waste work on campus. Goal of today is to get background knowledge on the campus.
  • What will this campaign encompass: what does Don’t Waste mean to students? Ideas about content generation (videos, social media?) How to use messaging, the tone, how should the logo be used.

What inspired the Don’t Waste campaign?

Jake: Not late to the party here. Jake joined the project in late July 2022. There had been some folks who had met with U of I in the past. Daphne joined in September 2022. She’ll be main stakeholder and point of contact for UIUC. There are many departments across campus, which makes it challenging. This is how we got to the zero waste event.

Meredith: Didn’t provide easy opportunities previously to provide an easy way to recycle. Also, a way to work with DIA and athletics.

Jen: How do we reduce plastic waste on campus? Switching to aluminum wasn’t an option, but best strategy was to evaluate how well the recycling program was operating. Looking at strategies to reduce waste.

Jake: glad to be a conduit to have discussions about things on campus.

Was their initiative on recycling prior to Don’t Waste? Any other slogan?

Focused on waste and plastic reduction, within the last 3 years they have not had a centralized campaign like this. Bin It was a prior intiative (about a year long, made some fun videos. Not nearly as robust as Don’t Waste, it wasn’t on bins. It was on social media and newsletters).

Goals, apart from increasing recycling?

Meredith: Waste reduction is primary goal, then reduce plastic, then second step is to recycle. Really trying to increase the diversion.

Jen: There have been a couple of waste audits. They are snapshots, so not sure how it could imapct all of campus

Meredith: They were done before the 3-stream receptacles. Not sure how helpful it would be. WTS would have more data

Jake: Circular Solutions waste audit details to come next week. Determine a cost associated.

Assets being developed? Found a strong connection between marketing or social media?

Jen: We have no data analytics capacity, but it would be wonderful if we did.

Jeff: want to make sure what we are providing UIUC is effective.

Jen: students do use the Illinois app. There is a QR code (link COVID test results with their identity). So there is an opportunity here to explore

Brette: is there a way to track sporting events on campus?

Jen: Don’t know of anything.

Thurman: The Illinois app has dining and sporting information, can use as ID in some instances, local campus radio station, geo-tagging/fencing, information about the local transit. Can find out who hosts the app

Meredith: we can ask Tony (iSEE) who was able to get all sustainability events on the full campus calendar. In some way, we are already connected

Greg: http://sites.superfanu.com/committotheg.com/index.html use the loyalty element and rewarding that behavior

Are there other assets that would make a big impact on the campaign (signage, content, digital boards, non-traditional things, what might be missing)?

Brette: can revist this and UIUC can provide feedback later.

Jen: Basic infrastructure (rec fields, some buildings, poritions of campus without receptacles)

Meredith: worth revisiting. Sustainable giveaways. With the quantity, this is challenging (welcome celebration - which we partnered with Coke on earlier this year - and athletics). Things like durable water bottles, that get people thinking about waste and recycling

Jen: we did talk to some folks at OSU MyCup program (evolved to rewarding people who use reusable vessels for FreeStyle Machines, and charging all others). We haven’t talked internally about this, something to follow up on with Thurman and others.

Team Clerk Claire Keating met with Zero Waste Team Clerk Nikki Palella and Justin Holding, a member of the engagement team.

The meeting content included brainstorming zero-waste food containers for athletes who participate in meals provided by DIA and Hendrick House.

Meeting also covered updates on Green Sports Alliance recommendation and future contacts.

Below is the link to an email from Geothermal Urbana-Champaign:

https://mailchi.mp/urbanaillinois.us/geopowerhour8-7284589?e=acd6a2962b

From: Leciejewski, Mary leciejewski.8@osu.edu
Sent: Tuesday, October 4, 2022 12:19 PM
To: Hulse, Daphne Lauren dlhulse2@illinois.edu
Cc: Szal, Dominika Patrycja dszal2@illinois.edu
Subject: RE: Scheduling a Waste Management Survey

Hi Daphne,

Pleasure speaking with you last week. I was going to send out an agenda for the Big 10 and Friends meeting on Thursday. Are you still interested in introducing yourself and your project to try to solicit a better response rate? If so, I can put you on the agenda.

Thanks! Mary

Biodiversity Plan intern Gabriel Harper-Hagen is looking for students and student groups to help him develop two iNaturalist surveys for the project. Here is the detailed explanation from Gabe:

The survey will act as a pilot for future surveying around campus and the broader community. We will have two surveys: one focused on animals and one focused on plants. This is because of the different methods of surveying each. The surveys will benefit from as many students that would be interested in this for either one (Or both). The survey will attempt to efficiently gather data about the diversity of plant and animal species found on campus to create a baseline for what is present and to help identify gaps on the campus where diversity may be lacking. If successful, I hope to expand the model to other parts of the community including the park districts to have larger community based BioBlitz seasonally to keep track of the diversity in the area and measure success of the biodiversity plan. 

As far as students can help, we need enough people to survey the area efficiently in a reasonable amount of time. The student groups and individual students would be helping in an initial survey that focuses only on the campus. My thought is that a date will be set for each of the two surveys where the participants can join to go over brief instructions on identifying plants with iNaturalist, adding them to the project, and explaining the purpose of surveying. iNaturalist allows for specific project data to be collected within a region which is then peer reviewed. Ideally, there will be some experts (students or professors if appropriate) that join for each survey to help with logistics and identification. I hope this will not only be a useful database for our campus to utilize, but also a fun learning experience. 

All iCAP students and environmental student groups are encouraged to participate. If interested, please email Gabe (harperh2@illinois.edu) and Resilience iCAP Team clerk Asli Topuzlu (aslit2@illinois.edu).