Category: Technical Assistance

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Researcher Spotlight: Joy Scrogum

photo of Joy ScrogumJoy Scrogum has been a sustainability professional for over 13 years, with ISTC’s public engagement and technical assistance programs. Joy has provided support for the Great Lakes Regional Pollution Prevention Roundtable (GLRPPR) since 2001, particularly in the development and maintenance of online resource compilations (Topic Hubs and Sector Resources) on a wide variety of sustainability issues. GLRPPR is a US EPA-funded regional center in the national Pollution Prevention Resource Exchange (P2Rx) network. Joy also played a key role in Greening Schools, a joint project between the IL EPA and ISTC which focused on making K-12 facilities & curricula more sustainable.

 

Joy’s most recent work with ISTC has centered around the Sustainable Electronics Initiative (SEI), for which she serves as coordinator. SEI is dedicated to the development and implementation of a more sustainable system for designing, producing, using, and managing electronic devices. She managed SEI’s International Sustainable Electronics Competition for college and university students; coordinates consortium meetings on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus related to sustainable electronics research, education, and operations; and taught a class in collaboration with the UI Technology Entrepreneur Center in the College of Engineering (ENG/TE 498: Sustainable Technology: Environmental and Social Impacts of Innovations) which used electronic products as the framework for discussion. Joy also currently works on Zero Waste Illinois projects.

 

With a MS in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Joy says her education has prepared her for the complex considerations associated with sustainability. “It may seem strange for someone with a background in wildlife ecology to be talking about design and end-of-life management related to electronics, but I think that ecological perspective is exactly what’s needed. Whether you’re talking about the life cycle of an organism or a product, you have to consider interactions with the larger system when it comes to sustainable solutions. It’s useful to think of products, services—any human activity—in the context of the ecosystem which is constantly impacting, and being impacted by, us. Helping students develop that sort of worldview, regardless of their field of study, is my favorite part of my job. I feel education for sustainability is a critical part of the University’s role in today’s society.”

 

Joy’s other duties include writing grant proposals and reports, blog posts, and fact sheets; contributing to social media campaigns; project development; and presenting at professional and public events such as the Naturally Illinois Expo. She also enjoys reviewing applications for the annual Illinois Governor’s Sustainability Awards Program, the oldest continuously running environmental awards program in the US. She is a member of the International Society of Sustainability Professionals, the Reuse Alliance, and the Illinois Food Scrap Coalition.

 

Connect with Joy on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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Zero is the Favorite Number for Waste Fighter

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Bart Bartels calls the shots at the Fighting Illini’s Zero Waste football game during Homecoming.

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.

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ISGS Seminar: Sustainable Business Serves the ‘Triple’ Bottom Line

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Kevin O’Brien

ISTC Director Kevin O’Brien will deliver the Illinois State Geological Survey Seminar at 11 a.m. Monday, Feb. 23 on “Using Sustainability to Drive Economic Growth.” The seminar will be held in Rm. 101, Natural Resources Building at the U of I at Urbana-Champaign.

 

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The Triple Bottom Line

The Illinois Sustainable Technology Center  has a long history of helping businesses save money, water, energy, and helping them anticipate and meet regulatory requirements.

 

That is a model of sustainable action that accounts for future generations’ needs while optimizing the goals of today. O’Brien, Ph.D., brings two decades of business experience from early-stage venture organizations to Fortune 500 corporations. He will discuss the utility and performance of a sustainability framework that embraces three fundamentals — People, Planet, and Profits.

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Upcoming Food Waste Training & Toolkit Piloting Opportunities

Several upcoming training opportunities are available for those interested in zero waste, specifically the reduction of waste in food service operations.

 

The US EPA Sustainable Materials Management (SMM) program will present a webinar on January 15, 2015, entitled “Food Waste Reduction Alliance, a Unique Industry Collaboration.” The webinar will take place from 12:00 to 1:30 PM CST. Online registration is available.

 

As defined by EPA, sustainable materials management (SMM) is “a systemic approach to using and reusing materials more productively over their entire lifecycles. It represents a change in how our society thinks about the use of natural resources and environmental protection. By examining how materials are used throughout their lifecycle, an SMM approach seeks to:

  • Use materials in the most productive way with an emphasis on using less;
  • Reduce toxic chemicals and environmental impacts throughout the material life cycle;
  • Assure we have sufficient resources to meet today’s needs and those of the future.”

The Food Waste Reduction Alliance (FWRA) is a collaborative project of the Grocery Manufacturers Association (representing food and beverage companies), the Food Marketing Institute (representing food retailers), and the National Restaurant Association (representing the food service industry), working to reduce food waste generation, increase food donations to the needy, and to divert unavoidable food waste from landfills through recycling.

 

In addition to the webinar overview of the FWRA, there will be a series of free webinars to guide users through the waste assessment and reduction process presented in the Reducing Wasted Food & Packaging Toolkit (available at http://www.epa.gov/foodrecovery/tools/). All are welcome to participate. The schedule for that series is below. Click on a webinar title to register online.

 

US EPA Region 9 is also inviting food service facilities (restaurants, cafeterias, grocers, and other commercial and institutional kitchens) in California, Nevada, Arizona, Hawaii and the Pacific Islands to pilot the toolkit. Along with the free webinar series, pilot participants are offered one-on-one technical assistance from an EPA team member; the opportunity to participate in peer groups to troubleshoot the tracking process; the chance to present in future EPA webinars; and the ability to jumpstart or enhance participation in the EPA’s Food Recovery Challenge. Learn more about the opportunity to pilot the Reducing Wasted Food & Packaging Toolkit at http://go.usa.gov/MuGA.

 

Questions can be directed to Amanda Hong at hong.amanda@epa.gov. Thanks to Amanda for sharing information on these opportunities.

 

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Businesses in Central Illinois Taking Up Green Challenge

GOCbuildingThe Illinois Green Office Challenge is picking up steam in it’s goal to green-up Central Illinois businesses.

 

CBS affiliate WYZZ Channel 31 last night reported on The Ecology Action Center’s partnership with the U of I’s Illinois Sustainable Technology Center to help Illinois businesses and organizations save money buy cutting utility bills and waste.

 

The Challenge provides ideas to help businesses compete to get recognition for their successes in sustainable business. This year the competition is focusing on organizations in and around Peoria, Bloomington-Normal, and Champaign-Urbana.

 

Other partners in the Challenge include the University of Illinois Extension, Economic Development Council for Central Illinois and the City of Urbana.

 

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PCBs Not Going to Clinton, But A Solution Still Needed

Village of Summit, a Chicago suburb
The Village of Summit, a Chicago suburb, is one of the Illinois communities in need of a permanent solution to PCB storage.

Now that the U.S. and Illinois Environmental Protection Agencies have rejected proposals for permanent PCB storage at the Clinton Landfill, the problem has not gone away.

 

Just what is to be done with the once common industrial chemical turned persistent hazard?

 

On Sept. 17, the University of Illinois is holding a day-long workshop to hear from academic and industry experts to bring the latest science to the policy table.

 

Register for the workshop being held at the U of I at Chicago campus by visiting: http://www.istc.illinois.edu/info/pcbworkshop.cfm. There are also plans to offer a live feed over the Internet.

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Three Tips on the Road to a Great Governor’s Award Application

TrophyPath2If your organization has done a lot in the name of sustainability – from projects that save money and resources to initiatives that strengthen the people and communities you work for – what are you waiting for? The Governor’s Sustainability Award provides a great opportunity for you to pull all of your sustainability work together into a single document: Your award application!

 

Because sustainability encompasses the triple bottom line – People, Planet, Profit – it can be tough to wrap one’s brain around all that should be included in your application. Our How To Apply page and FAQ’s will help you in that process, but we know that’s a lot to read! Here are three tips to help you cut to the chase, and get started on your application (due May 22).

 

1. Start driving. Get key people on board.

Governor’s Award Applications are typically a team effort, but there is often a single person or small team that drives the process forward. The application drivers can be anyone – from top management to employees who volunteer time on a Green Team. If you’re reading this, you may be the driver!

 

Send a note out to co-workers letting them know you’re preparing a Gov.’s Award application. Here are some key people to get on board early (positions vary by organization):

  • Top Management
  • Facilities/Operations Manager
  • Plant Manager
  • Sustainability Officer/Green Team Lead
  • PR Officer

 

2. Read these two things.

Narrative Guidelines –You have up to six single-spaced pages to describe your sustainability accomplishments. These guidelines tell you how.

 

Metrics Form Instructions – Download the Metrics Form (Microsoft Excel format) and read the Instructions tab.

 

3. Check out the sample applications.

The sample applications, available HERE, display best practices from past winners’ applications. Note that a good application typically includes a variety of projects touching on multiple impacts or aspects of sustainability. The project descriptions will also include some detail on how they were conceived and who was involved. We want to hear how your organization went from idea to implementation.

 

 

BONUS TIP: Consider normalizing your data.

Normalized data is reported on a relevant per-unit basis. One of our 2013 award winners, Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District, tracked their water use in this way before and after implementing water conservation measures in their wash bay. Instead of simply reporting total gallons of water consumed, they reported gallons per vehicle-hour, providing us with a water-use measure that can be compared across years, regardless of how many trips the buses make.  This type of measurement, a normalized metric, is extremely helpful for evaluating your progress – the true impact of a sustainability project.

 

Check out the Illinois Manufacturer Inc. sample application for more normalization examples and talk to your team about what per-unit measures you might use in your application.

 

If you still have questions about the process, contact John Mulrow for more information via e-mail at jmulrow@illinois.edu or call him at 630.586.9168.

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Registration Open for Green Chemistry Conference

2014-logoRegistration is open for the The Great Lakes Green Chemistry Conference: Innovating for Success in Cleveland on April 1–2, 2014.

 

The purpose of this conference is to show how innovations in green chemistry practices drive advances in business, academia, policy, and human health protection in the Great Lakes region, and how integration and collaboration in these areas is crucial for success.

 

The conference will include keynote presentations by John Warner, Warner-Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry; Julie Zimmerman, Center for Green Chemistry and Engineering at Yale; and Dennis McGavis, Global Sustainability Director at Goodyear Tire & Rubber along with plenary sessions, panel sessions, breakout sessions and a poster networking exchange.

 

This conference will be preceded by a half-day Great Lakes Regional Pollution Prevention Roundtable (GLRPPR) meeting and followed by one-day training on the hazard assessment tool, the GreenScreen™ for Safer Chemicals..Separate registration is required for each event. Co-sponsors include the U of I, ISTC, and GLRPPR.

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ISTC Invited to Join Pollution Prevention Training by U.S. EPA

Two ISTC professionals were invited to participate in a pilot training program in Chicago organized by the U.S. EPA’s Region 5.

 

Laura Barnes, Great Lakes Regional Pollution Prevention Roundtable (GLRPPR) Executive Director and Resource Librarian presented, “Using GLRPPR to Identify Hazardous Substance Reduction Resources.”

 

Dan Marsch, an environmental engineer in ISTC’s Technical Assistance Program our of Peoria, presented “Green Industrial Performance through Waste Minimization.”

 

There is a trove of useful information from the training on the GLRPPR Blog.

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