Recognizing Outstanding Recyclers on Campus

While most employees at UIC are participating in the recycling program, there are still people out there who don’t want to or don’t know why it’s important to recycle.  We can all choose to see recycling as an inconvenience, or it can be viewed as a vital part of our efforts to repair the world - before it’s too late.

There are many different approaches, but UIC is making commitments to increase the amount we recycle. For example, we have decided to take the RePaper Challenge and recycle 75% of all paper.

During the waste audits to prepare for the RePaper Challenge, we discovered one building was head-and-shoulders above the others we sampled:  University Hall. We realized that University Hall is a shining example of how the faculty, students and staff, including building service workers (BSWs), can come together to greatly improve a building’s recycling performance, and decided it was important to highlight this building’s successes.

University Hall is typical of the office buildings on campus in that it has the full recycling program in place.  “Full” means office occupants get desk side recycling bins and then separate their own recyclables and trash in hallway recycling stations.  BSWs take over from there, moving as much as five tons a month of paper and cardboard to larger centrally-located storage areas, and making sure the material is sorted and ready for recycling truck drivers to carry to off-campus recycling facilities. Although about 6 out of 10 buildings on campus have this system in place, we’re recognizing UH because we tested them and they passed with flying colors, scoring a paper recovery rate of over 70%!

Keep an eye out for this certificate of appreciation: 

We’ll post copies in the offices of the English Department, the School of Literatures, Cultural Studies and Linguistics, and in the College of Business.  We’ll also provide individual certificates to group of employees who had the biggest part to play, the Building Operations staff.

A big thank you goes out to UH supervisors Melva Malone & Gail Hampton-Mosley, and Building Service Workers (BSWs) Jesus Ayala, Rita Corona, Susie Edwards, Wilhelmina Franklin, John Gregory, Tony Rhodes, James Taylor, and Theresa Zamora for all the work they do to keep the building in order.

Along with the certificates of appreciation, we have candy. Jars of candy will be given to the BSWs and a big bag will be available for office staff in the three offices listed.  We tried to use candy made locally, such as Tootsie Rolls, since locally produced items have less distance to travel to get to campus (therefore reducing associated carbon emissions) and supports our local economy.  Also, the jars holding the candy were re-used!

As we continue to monitor recycling progress in buildings on campus, we hope to be able to recognize more students, faculty and staff in many of the other buildings on campus in the next year. If you know of someone that does an outstanding job of recycling on campus, let us know by sending a message to sustainability@uic.edu.

Meeting the RePaper Challenge

UIC is taking part in a national effort by higher education institutions to raise campus paper recycling rates to 75% by the year 2015. 

On Earth Day 2011, campuses across North America were called to participate in the RePaperCampus Challenge.  This program is intended to increase sustainability on college campuses.    

At UIC, we are making strides to reduce our carbon footprint, and we’ve received growing recognition for our recycling efforts: 

-        We placed 9th nationally in the Gorilla Prize Division (total weight of recycling) in RecycleMania, a friendly competition between 600 colleges and universities;

-        The Illinois RecyclingAssociation awarded UIC as the 2010-2011 Grand Champion for Outstanding College and University Recycling Program.  UIC was acknowledged for demonstrating the greatest achievement in both source reduction and recycling among Illinois colleges and universities competing in RecycleMania.

Despite these accolades, there’s always room to improve.  We continue to learn about the environmental turmoil our planet is facing; this means we can’t be satisfied by simply improving, but must set higher goals and achieve them.  That’s why we’re participating in the RePaper Challenge.

Auditing our Trash

In October, staff from the Office of Sustainability, with help from the departments of Transportation and Building Services, along with student volunteers from the student groups EcoCampus and Roots of Justice, carried out waste audits of four buildings:  University Hall, Student Center East, Stukel Towers, and the College of Medicine.  The audit was a first step in establishing a baseline to figure out our current paper recycling rate (and it also helps us get a sense of how recycling is working).

Why these buildings?  Well, broadly, we chose buildings with different functions to get a sense of how things are working in the different building types, but more specifically…

University Hall because it’s typical of our existing recycling program: an office building in which the occupants are supplied with deskside recycling bins and are expected to regularly walk to recycling stations in the hallways and separate their paper, bottles and cans, and trash; building service workers then collect from those hallway bins, and place paper and bottles and cans in larger toters in the building; then the recycling drivers come for weekly pickups.  We expected that UH would have the highest recovery rate of the four buildings.

The College of Medicine includes the last few state-run (more on that later) buildings on campus that don’t have the full recycling program.  We are applying for a state funded grant to purchase additional equipment to bring the five buildings there up to the level that UH has achieved.  The College of Medicine also has labs and classroom space.

Stukel Towers, a residence hall example, was chosen because developing a full recycling program in the residence halls is another goal of ours this year.  The state-funded grant would provide residents with recycling equipment as well. 

Finally, Student Center East was chosen as an example of a student center on campus.

Along with residence halls, athletic facilities, and other revenue-generating facilities on campus (like the UIC Forum and the Pavilion), Student Center East (and West) is part of a slightly different management system at UIC called Auxiliary Services. The final major goal this year is to bring the recycling programs in Auxiliary Services buildings to a similar level with the other non-Auxiliary buildings on campus.  Auxiliary administration is purchasing new recycling equipment to capture the streams of paper, glass bottles, metal cans and plastic that are generated by the students, staff and visitors that traffic those buildings. Recently, the Office of Sustainability gave a “train-the-trainer” program for supervisors to bring their staff up to speed on recycling.

For the audit, we pulled 5 bags of trash from each of 4 buildings, and then we sorted it one building at a time.  We found percentage by weight of each type of paper, plastic, metal, aluminum, glass, and waste materials.  In the graph below, “Paper Fiber” refers to all types of recyclable paper on campus – basically office paper and cardboard.

We then compared the findings of the audit against the monthly recycling numbers.  It starts to paint an interesting picture about recycling in our various facilities on campus.

Results:  Where we are at now, and reaching our goal

When we totaled the four buildings, 27% of the trash was paper that we should have captured.

When we extrapolated the data from the waste audit to the overall campus waste stream, we found we have a recovery rate of 45%.

This means we have a good way to go to reach the RePaper Challenge goal of 75% recovery rate, but we are making that commitment, so we need everyone on campus – students, staff, faculty, and the administration – to join with us in order to reach it. 

So, what do you think – can we meet the RePaper Challenge?

To find out more about the Recycling Program at UIC, visit the Office of Sustainability website.

UIC Awards Caterpillar Sustainability Scholarships

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

University of Illinois at Chicago Awards Caterpillar Sustainability Scholarships

Chicago, Illinois – January 10, 2012 – The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) Office of Sustainability announces the second annual Caterpillar Sustainability Scholars awards.  Six undergraduate students received $1,000 tuition scholarships in recognition of their demonstrated involvement in sustainability issues, financial need, and status as underrepresented in their respective fields of study.

The winners are:  Kara Komp, Urban Planning & Public Affairs; April Muller, Urban Planning & Public Affairs; Ponnu Podiyara, Biology and Psychology; Alberto Rincon, Mechanical Engineering; and Samuel Yoder, Electrical Engineering.

More information on sustainability at UIC can be found at http://www.uic.edu/sustainability/

Contact:

Cynthia Klein-Banai, Associate Chancellor for Sustainability

University of Illinois at Chicago

1140 S. Paulina, #120

Chicago, Illinois 60612

cindy@uic.edu

122 words

A PDF of this press release, and more, can be seen at http://sustainability.uic.edu/press/releases.html

Energy Efficiency & the Green Practice Path

In my day to day work, I think a lot about energy conservation and efficiency in a traditional sense (using less electricity on campus, trying to fund projects like lighting retrofits).  In a different, spiritual sense Chogyam Trungpa, a Tibetan Buddhist meditation master, says the greatest energy loss comes from inner conflict between body, heart and mind. In essence, conflict is a waste of energy.

This thought returns to me often, especially at times when I glance askew at humongous SUVs,  berate myself for forgetting my reusable cloth shopping bags, or worse yet, when I run across yet another “Easy Tips to Living Green!” article.  If all this is supposed to be so easy, why is the world still so messed up?  Can mental energy spent on irritation and anxiety be reduced? Redirected??

The [Unsustainable] Corporation: "The Death of Birth"

I'm almost finished watching "The Corporation," but I'm going to write anyway about the life-changing experience I've endured in the first hour and forty minutes of my viewing. According to the film's website, the documentary "explores the nature and spectacular rise of the dominant institution of our time." I encourage you, Dear Readers of Our Blog, to watch this documentary as it has been heralded as the most successful Canadian documentary ever.

While the documentary focuses mostly on the evolution of the corporation in America, modern corporate greed, and the effects of advertising, there is an appropriate digression into the area of sustainability that is discussed by CEOs like Ray Anderson, professors and experts like Noam Chomsky, and people who work within the corporate environment like Carlton Brown, a broker who tells the audience how it really is (for serious, this guy is honest).