People at the University of Illinois who care about recycling think about changing human behavior. They wonder how to make the distinction between the landfill bin and the recycle bin so convenient and so obvious that even the most stressed and preoccupied student hits the right target. At the Champaign-Urbana campus, zero-waste is a serious commitment. It is included as a component of the Illinois Climate Action Plan which obligates the U of I to achieving carbon neutral status by 2050. Read more on recycling improvements.
The Latest and Greatest
The got-to-have feeling about the latest and greatest tech gadgets might be contributing to some major global sustainability issues. Check out what The Conversation has to say in their article, “Annual upgrade? How your mobile contract is really costing the earth.” Visit ISTC’s Sustainable Electronics Initiative website to learn more about how the environment is impacted by and social justice issue related to electronics. For specific questions related to sustainable electronics, please contact Joy Scrogum, ISTC’s Emerging Technologies Resource Specialist.
The Army is Greenest in Workplace Sustainability
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Construction Engineering Research Laboratories in Champaign was the 2015 champion for green workplace achievements. It and nine other winners of the first Illinois Green Office Challenge were announced Thursday. Find out about all the winners here.
College, University Recyclers Set the Stage for Generation ‘Green’
College and university administrators going to the Illinois Recycling Association’s (IRA) June workshops for higher education will be inspired by the great ideas included on The Best Colleges dot org website.
ISTC is one of the sponsors of two training workshops for Illinois colleges and universities on planning, audits, analyzing data and other issues. Kennedy-King College will host a workshop for the City College of Chicago from 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. Wednesday, June 10. The deadline to register is June 10. Illinois Central College will be the site of the second workshop from 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. Wednesday, June 17. (Meet in the morning at nearby Embassy Suites, East Peoria.) The deadline for that one is June 12. The East Peoria workshop is conveniently scheduled the day before the IRA/ILCSWMA/SWANA Annual Joint Conference. For more information and to register, visit http://www.illinoisrecycles.org/events/2015-conference/pre-conference-college-seminars/.
As far as hip green universities go, we can all envy UC Davis’ commitment to zero-waste, which they plan to achieve by 2020. They have had their version of the U of I’s ‘Dump and Run’ since 1975. Such programs allow students to ‘donate’ good stuff they don’t want to take home and sell it back to other students next semester.
Maine’s College of the Atlantic is another beacon of greenness, where students recycling enterprise is ubiquitous. It is easy to recycle on campus and reportedly, no pizza crusts ever escape the compost bins.
Here in Illinois, take notes from Loyola University Chicago, which is featured in the latest One Billion Gallon Water Challenge Research Update. Faculty, students and staff there are the focus of experiments to improve water conservation behavior on campus. Their goal is to save up to three million gallons of water a year. They are designing a Resource Tool Kit to share their results with other Illinois colleges and universities.
Talk about student leadership of the green hue, it is hard to beat the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where year’s ago students voted to charge themselves a Sustainability Fee. Since then the Student Sustainability Committee has used the fee to drive green initiatives in many fruitful directions. Read here some recent results of their leadership.
Eco-heroes, Bargain Hunters Need Apply
Technophiles, fashionistas and Earth Citizens take note: Volunteers at the University YMCA’s 2015 Dump & Run get exclusive, first dibs on the quality clothing, electronics and other cool stuff that students tend to chuck, not carry, at year’s end.
At the spring Dump & Run the YMCA accepts good stuff that they don’t want in dumpsters and sells them cheap to returning students in August.
The YMCA needs volunteers to collect and sort contributions May 11-16 and May 18-22 and May 25-29. Volunteer six hours or more and you get your pick of the mechandise in the fall.
ISTC for the Gold!
Bobby Knight – 1984 U.S.A. men’s Olympic basketball coach – said,
“The key is not the will to win. Everybody has that. It is the will to prepare to win that is important.”
This statement is very true for the staff at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center. They not only want the world to be sustainable, they are willing to prepare for a sustainable future and create new ways to be more sustainable. Some examples include their efforts on Zero Waste Illinois and their research on innovative ways to mitigate emerging contaminants. Continue reading “ISTC for the Gold!”
Brother, Can You Spare Eleven Trillion Gallons?
No.
Our Center’s One Billion Gallon Water Challenge has asked Illinoisans to think about innovations and behavior changes to cut our use of water significantly. It is not an easy goal. Eleven trillion gallons boggles the mind.
California’s 25 percent mandatory cut in water use supplied by local water agencies is, sadly, not an overreaction to the historic drought plaguing western states.
People tend to innovate best when forced to.
We should see innovations in technology, governance, law enforcement, industry, and human nature that may benefit us all if we let it.
Carbon: Humanity’s Home Hides Hazards
Methane (CH4) is 30 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2.
Today, The Washington Post’s story on mysterious craters forming in Siberia reports that the phenomenon might be evidence of methane escaping from melting permafrost.
Last year, the journal Nature reported on research that the amount of methane in the atmosphere from lakes and freshwater sediments worldwide increases several times for each degree that the Earth’s temperature rises.
Computer models show the sensitivity of methane hydrate deposits in the ocean to be released into the atmosphere as the ocean warms. There is no agreement how much methane is down there, but it is many gigatons.
Skeptics can deny that Earth, and even Venus, are vulnerable to runaway greenhouse effects. But the news from Siberia must have all climate scientists pausing.
Zero is the Favorite Number for Waste Fighter
ISTC’s Bart Bartels has joined the Purchasing, Waste, and Recycling SWATeam at the U of I. It is one of six SWATeams (Sustainability Working Advisory Teams) helping evaluate the university’s progress since the 2010 Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP). Their work will be important for the formulation of the next iCAP later this year.
As Sustainability Outreach Specialist at ISTC, Bart has helped organize zero-waste events on campus. The next one will be the Naturally Illinois EXPO (with something for all K-12 students) sponsored by the Prairie Research Institute. Bart also is the driving force behind the Illinois Green Office Challenge.
He has also worked as Zero Waste Coordinator within campus Facilities & Services and Campus Sustainability Manager at Grand Valley State University (MI). The SWATeams will be important to the successful updating of the iCAP this year by the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment.
No Need to Don a Gas Mask for Spring Cleaning
Spring cleaning is a happy tradition of opening every window and scrubbing the home down before bugs have opened their compound eyes.
You have a choice in the compounds you use for spring cleaning. Expensive commercial cleaning products allow you to fill your home with ammonia, alkyl ammonium chlorides, cationic and anionic solutions, chlorine, cresol, hydrochloric acid, isopropanol, lye, naphtha, nitrobenzene, oxalic acid, perchloroethylene, petroleum distillates, phenol, sodium bisulfate, sodium hypochlorite, and sulfuric acid.
For a lot less money, you can do the jobs with vinegar, baking soda, salt, and lemon juice, ISTC staffers Joy Scrogum and Laura Barnes remind us in a Tuesday story in The Daily Illini.
There we find that the University of Massachusetts Lowell Toxics Use Reduction Institute is a nice source of information about greening your spring cleaning.
The Cleveland Clinic has a checklist of hazardous ingredients you might find on your shelves.
The latest ISTC Report offers a cautionary tale of how one common cleaning chemical additive operates on the environment downstream of your drain.