Campus Composting Programs Expand
Category: Campus Sustainability Program
Safe Waters: Campus Partnership Builds Trust in the Tap to Reduce Plastic Waste
On move-in day at the University of Illinois, families haul the essentials of dorm life up stairwells and into residence halls as students settle into their new rooms, carrying mini-fridges, posters, laundry baskets – and often, cases of bottled water.
Professor Jennifer Fraterrigo noticed the plastic bottles while helping her own first-year student move in.
Later, scrolling through social media posts from other parents and students, she saw the same concern repeated again and again: Many families were unsure whether the campus tap water was safe to drink. For them, bottled water felt like the safest option.
But those cases of bottled water add up quickly. Sold in residence halls, retail dining locations, and athletic events in staggering numbers, water bottles are one of the most visible sources of single-use plastic waste on campus.
The experience confirmed what Fraterrigo had learned through her work to reduce plastic waste on campus. As Associate Director of Campus Sustainability at the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment (iSEE), she had initiated a survey investigating why students routinely chose bottled water over the tap. Were there enough places to refill a bottle on campus? Was there a broad perception that tap water is unsafe?
Those efforts have coalesced into a cross-campus collaboration by iSEE, University Housing, student researchers, and other units to validate campus water quality, add dozens of new bottle-filling stations, make them more accessible to students, and build trust in the water flowing through campus.
The 2022 iSEE survey examined student and faculty attitudes about tap, filtered, and bottled water. More than a third of first-year students said bottled water was their primary source of drinking water, and many believed that bottled water is safer than tap water.
“Some students may come from a place where they never drank the water out of the tap,” Fraterrigo said. “Probably the vast majority of people don’t know where their water is coming from.”
Convenience also emerged as a barrier. Over half of first- and second-year students said there are not enough convenient places to refill a reusable water bottle on campus.
The goal of the survey was to identify why people choose to purchase bottled water and what sustainable interventions could make the greatest impact.
“We saw two directions,” said Fraterrigo, Professor of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences. “One, we needed to do some testing to confirm that the quality of the water is safe. And two, we needed to make sure there were more of these bottle fillers available and that campus standards include bottle fillers.”
For testing, iSEE turned to Ro Cusick, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, who had already incorporated drinking water analysis into their coursework. After hearing Fraterrigo present on campus plastic waste, Cusick saw an opportunity for a research project to connect classroom learning with a real campus concern. “It was really relevant and interesting to the students,” Cusick said.
During the first year, Cusick’s students collected water samples from a variety of campus buildings, including a few residence halls, the Campus Instructional Facility, and the Illini Union. In the second year, the focus shifted to residence halls specifically. Students tested three key water quality indicators: free chlorine, lead, and copper. The chlorine residual indicates how safely water is being transferred; lead and copper are monitored due to potential public health risks.
The results were reassuring across the residence halls, showing very low levels of lead and copper and healthy chlorine residual, Cusick said. The water on campus comes from the pristine Mahomet Aquifer, which exceeds federal safety standards according to annual American Water testing.
“The quality of the reports was high because the students cared,” Cusick said, and they gained valuable experience collecting and synthesizing data and preparing reports for real campus clients.
“If our data helps students feel safer to drink water rather than purchase bottled water, that’s great for campus sustainability. If there’s less plastic waste, that’s better for students’ health in the long run, too,” Cusick said.
Meanwhile, iSEE partnered with University Housing on a successful application to the Student Sustainability Committee (SSC) to fund additional bottle-filling stations. Miriam Keep, iSEE Sustainability Programs Coordinator, worked closely with Housing to write the grant application – a collaboration reflecting how sustainability projects often move forward on campus.
“Anytime you’re working with people from different areas of campus, you’re bringing a diverse set of ideas together,” said Aaron Lewis, Assistant Director for Housing Maintenance Operations. “When you put those together, there can be a great benefit.”
iSEE and Housing settled on a proposal to provide one bottle filler per 100 students.
So far, 28 new refill stations have been installed as part of the initiative, including eight over winter break, with 10 more planned in the coming months. Housing is funding the labor for installation, while SSC funds cover equipment costs.
The exact configuration will vary in each residence hall building, Lewis said. In complexes like the Florida Avenue Residence Halls, renovation plans include water bottle refill stations distributed across the towers. Other residences have suite-style bathrooms where students can fill up their water bottles with private taps. And newer buildings such as Wassaja Hall have already incorporated water refill stations as part of campus sustainability requirements for LEED Silver construction.
Early usage data suggests strong demand. Many new refill stations include digital counters that track the number of bottles filled, and one station alone logged 40,000 refills from August to winter break. “What we can see from the counters on the bottle fillers installed over the summer is that they have been used extensively,” Lewis said.
As part of the broader initiative, Illinois Athletics also has worked with iSEE to review reusable water bottle policies. Empty reusable water bottles and tumblers are now allowed within stadiums, and water refill stations have been installed to give Illinois fans access to free, sustainable drinking water. “I’d love to see the results from sales data indicating that there’s a decline in bottled water being purchased,” Fraterrigo said.
Infrastructure alone does not change behavior; students need to know where refill stations are located and feel confident using them. iSEE partnered with Facilities & Services to conduct a campus-wide inventory of water refill stations. Using GIS mapping, the team developed an interactive map to replace a static PDF list of refill stations. University Housing is also sharing water quality information from the engineering classes through digital signage in residence halls and QR codes linking to test results.
Looking ahead, iSEE hopes to incorporate refill station maps into the Illinois App, making that information even easier to find.
“There’s more to do,” Keep said. “We are trying to get the message out about water quality – it’s hard to change behavior and habits. This is a long, ongoing effort to keep emphasizing the same message.”
For Fraterrigo, this project demonstrates the importance of cross-campus collaboration for sustainability initiatives.
“We brought together a lot of different groups to accomplish what we did,” she said.
“We want everyone in the campus community to feel like they’re part of these solutions. This is a global problem – plastic waste,” Fraterrigo said. “Here’s an opportunity to think globally and act locally.”
The initiative ties directly into iSEE’s zero-waste goals under the Illinois Climate Action Plan – to keep waste out of landfills – and the institute’s efforts to engage and educate campus about sustainability. Engaging students in research connects them to the solutions and data that drive their peers’ decisions about water bottle usage.
Each time a student stops by a water refill station instead of the vending machine, that’s one less plastic bottle purchased and tossed – and one more consumer reassured that it’s safe to turn back to the tap.
– Article by iSEE Communications Intern Sophia Beem
iSEE Partnerships Promote Sustainable Start to New Semester
In August, the University of Illinois welcomed the Class of 2028 — more than 9,000 students strong. Thanks to Zero Waste efforts championed by iSEE and its campus partners, this record freshman class started the semester off sustainably during events like the New Student Convocation Welcome Celebration and the Quest for Success.
To help achieve objectives prescribed in the Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP), iSEE has been identifying areas around campus to decrease waste and increase overall sustainability. “We first look at campus data where large amounts of waste are generated. Then we work with our partners to figure out what solutions are possible and work best for our campus,” iSEE Sustainability Coordinator Miriam Keep said. “Partnerships make all of this happen.”
In what was a typical sweltering August, water accessibility was a top priority. On Friday, Aug. 23, Student Affairs’ New Student & Family Experiences (NSFE) office hosted a Welcome Celebration, directly after the New Student Convocation.
Thousands of new Illini flocked over to Lot 31 where, during any normal year, thousands of plastic water bottles would have been chilling, ready to be used once and then discarded. This year, leading up to the Welcome Celebration, NSFE coordinated with resident advisors to remind freshmen to bring reusable water bottles to the event in order to cut down on plastic waste.
Around Lot 31, various water tanks — branded as “WaterMonsters” and “Quench Buggys” and provided by the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics (DIA) and Student Affairs — dotted the grass. The WaterMonsters — six feet tall with a 125-gallon capacity — only filled up water containers that were either reusable or recyclable. Any student who arrived at the Welcome Celebration without a reusable container was given a recyclable aluminum container provided by Coca-Cola, a longtime campus partner in promoting recycling efforts.
“The iCAP recognizes that pursuing zero waste demands more than just recycling,” F&S Zero Waste Coordinator Daphne Hulse said. “Our programs to eliminate unnecessary waste at large events reflect that philosophy.”
Even after the students were dismissed, college by college, and all the recyclables had been collected, can by can, one WaterMonster was reused at the next day’s Quest for Success — a scavenger hunt-like event that familiarizes new students with campus resources. During that event, the WaterMonster provided a concrete example of reducing waste directly next to iSEE’s station.
The WaterMonster also paired nicely with the QR code sticker given out by iSEE at Quest for Success which links to a map of more than 700 refillable bottle “hydration stations” around campus. The map, updated recently by Facilities & Services (F&S), reflects a longtime relationship with iSEE and a commitment to reducing plastic waste and improving campus sustainability.
“The data tell us one of the biggest sources of single-use plastic on campus is water bottles,” Hulse said. “We inventoried all campus facilities and recently upgraded our map identifying where water filler stations are available to an increasingly user-friendly interface.”
Soon, new students staying in older housing will also see hydration stations pop up right at their doorstep. Partnering with University Housing, iSEE was awarded a grant from the Student Sustainability Committee (SSC) to install more than new 50 filling stations in residence halls across campus.
“A lot of our newly renovated residence halls like ISR have plenty of these filling stations,” Keep said. “This way, older facilities can have those as well. We want to make it easy for all students to choose reusable water bottles over disposable ones.”
After Welcome Week and into the first week of classes, all eyes turned to Memorial Stadium for the Fighting Illini’s first football game of the season against Eastern Illinois University (EIU). As it happens, it was also the first football game in the stadium’s 100-year history where you could take any empty reusable water bottle into the stands with you. Previously, only clear bottles were allowed.
According to F&S, gameday refuse adds up to 20 tons of waste into the campus system, with most of it being recyclables. That’s why DIA’s efforts to increase the amount of recycling bins around the State Farm Center and Lot 31 — any tailgater’s dream — mark another sustainable victory in its partnership with iSEE to reduce waste as part of the iCAP.
DIA will team up with iSEE and F&S again this season for more Zero Waste tailgates, hoping to surpass the 2,560 pounds of recyclables collected last year. Further down the line, iSEE has helped DIA set even bigger sustainability goals.
“What we hope to get to in the future is that we won’t have to do as many Zero Waste events because it’ll just be automatic for people,” Senior Associate Athletics Director Marty Kaufmann recently told iSEE. “Over the course of several years, we’ll be able to be in a place where we’ll have our fans trained for recycling and sustainability that Zero Waste events are truly every day.”
As iSEE celebrates Sustainability Month and begins to draft a new version of the iCAP in 2025, recognizing these successes toward campus Zero Waste objectives is paramount. Cross-campus collaboration, consistent messaging, and individual efforts are integral to establishing a “culture of zero waste” — from the university’s largest departments all the way down to each one of the 9,000 new Illini.
— Article by iSEE Communications Associate Gabe Lareau
Help Us Set Climate Goals for iCAP 2025!
The University of Illinois community has made steady progress and encountered a fair share of challenges on the road to its goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 — a target set out by the Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP). However, keeping that central goal in mind, some of iCAP 2020’s many objectives need updating; Illinois today is a far cry from the Illinois of four years ago.
The iCAP 2025 update is less than one year away. Because campus has changed drastically, and because of that looming deadline, the Institute for Sustainability, Energy & Environment (iSEE) is asking campus to help identify priorities for iCAP 2025. A series of input sessions will be held throughout the fall to give students, faculty, and staff the opportunity to offer suggestions and learn about the objectives that the iCAP teams are considering, as well as the progress they have made so far.
Student iCAP Input Sessions are scheduled for:
- 6 to 7:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 7, Room 4035 Campus Instructional Facility (CIF)
- 5 to 6:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 28, Room 94 Illinois Street Residence Halls (ISR)
- 5 to 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 20, Room 2025A Student Dining and Residential Programs Building (SDRP), Ikenberry Commons
This past spring, iSEE used events like the new “Sustainapalooza” celebration and the Green Globe Awards to gather input on iCAP 2025’s top priorities. To acknowledge that feedback, and provide some background on what’s already been accomplished, here are the top answers from hundreds of students, faculty, and staff on what each iCAP Team’s charge should be.
Energy: More renewables
“More renewable energy” was one of the most common suggestions, and for good reason. It is the single most effective way the university can reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.
Currently, around 75% of campus energy is supplied by fossil fuels — natural gas and a small amount of coal — burned at Abbott Power Plant. The rest is either purchased directly from the grid or generated through renewable energy. Today, 13% of campus electricity is generated directly by the University’s two solar farms, a smattering of rooftop solar and geothermal power, and a Power Purchase Agreement with the Rail Splitter Wind Farm.
That percentage is steadily increasing, keeping the campus on track to meet its goals. Even more clean energy is on the way, too. A “Solar Farm 3.0” is in the works and, if campus is to fulfill its clean energy objectives, it must be online and generating 30,000 MWh/year by 2030.
Implementation: Fossil fuel divestment
Based on the recent iCAP feedback, “divest/more sustainable investments” was the number one response from the university community.
Objective 9.1 of the 2020 iCAP details that the university must draw up a plan to rescind its investments from any companies that “profit from the extraction, transportation, or combustion of coal, petroleum, or natural gas.” No plan for fossil fuel divestment has been developed by the Audit, Budget, Finance, and Facilities Committee of the University of Illinois System for approval by the Board of Trustees, who make final financial decisions.
Education/Engagement: Spread sustainability awareness
For iCAP 2025, respondents recommended that the Education and Engagement Teams promote sustainability not only through university events and programs, but also in campus classrooms.
This past fall, the Engagement Team worked with the Office of Civic Life to provide a large number of volunteers at the university’s Zero Waste football and basketball games. The team also suggested collaborating with other student organizations to staff events like Green Quad Day and Sustainapalooza with even more volunteers, thereby increasing outreach and spreading awareness. Looking ahead to iCAP 2025, the Engagement Team is hoping to further educate campus about progress made on iCAP objectives as well as promote Greener Campus Certifications — steps that any campus office, event, or chapter can take to adopt sustainable practices and reduce their environmental impact.
Thanks to the Education Team, the campus is closer than ever to incorporating a sustainability option into the general education curriculum. And iSEE’s Environmental Leadership Program — which includes trips to local city councils, the state Capitol, and Chicago businesses — has seen massive success and will run for its fifth year this fall.
Resilience: Work more closely with the local community
Feedback that fell under the Resilience Team’s jurisdiction fits in well with its overall approach: coordinating with community partners.
The iCAP Resilience Team is unique; some of its members are representatives from Champaign, Urbana, and Savoy. Because climate change’s effects are so wide-reaching, local collaboration is paramount.
And that collaboration has paid off. The university, its three surrounding municipalities, and the Champaign County Soil and Water Conservation District formed the Champaign County Stormwater Partnership, which has identified best practices to reduce stormwater damage. This played an integral role in both Champaign and Urbana increasing their stormwater fees to better adapt to more extreme weather.
The Resilience Team has also helped spearhead the trans-municipality Urban Biodiversity Master Plan developed by Illinois Extension. This plan would not only benefit native species by planting trees, but also help marginalized and increasingly susceptible communities by fortifying them against the worsening effects of climate change. The campus intends to continue these kinds of collaborative opportunities to address shared sustainability issues in the community.
Transportation: Fewer gas-powered vehicles
Feedback for the Transportation iCAP Team was expansive, but it all falls under one umbrella: less gas on campus.
Reducing the amount of internal combustion engines on campus begets a two-pronged approach: Encourage people to ditch their cars and, if vehicles are necessary, require that they run on electricity.
For individuals, walking, bicycling, and taking public transportation instead of driving drastically reduces emissions. To encourage that, the Transportation Team has stuck close to the 2014 campus bike plan and updated it this year. Those efforts have paid off: Illinois is a certified Bicycle Friendly University and is set to see only 50% of faculty, staff, and students use cars on campus by 2025.
For larger entities, the Transportation Team’s recommendation for an Electric Vehicle Task Force has been fulfilled by the University Parking Department. The Task Force will work with various campus departments, colleges, and divisions to convert their fleets entirely to EVs.
Zero Waste: Increase recycling
Considering that, from a very young age, most University of Illinois students today were taught that throwing something away was bad, it’s obvious why “increase recycling” was one of the most frequent suggestions.
And, if you need an obvious visual for how the iCAP has helped do exactly that, look no further than the giant green bin in Lot 31 across from Grange Grove. It was the final destination for over 2,500 pounds of recyclables generated by Illini fans from two Zero Waste basketball games and two football tailgates.
The Zero Waste Team is looking to increase not only zero waste athletic events but also the amount of “3-bins” that separate waste into paper, plastic, and trash. These receptacles intercept waste at the source, easing the burden from the Waste Transfer Station’s eight sorters and ensuring that less trash ends up in the landfill. Currently, there are 64 around campus; the goal is 150.
Land & Water: More native and pollinator-friendly plants
Just behind expanded recycling efforts, “a greater number of native and pollinator-friendly plantings” was the next most popular response for iCAP 2025.
Every year, 300 new trees are planted on campus, all of them native. Each tree, too, is a natural offset that sucks carbon dioxide out of the air for free and provides much-needed shade for long walks to class.
Not as numerous, but still surpassing the iCAP’s pollinator-friendly landscapes objective, are the many pollinator pockets around campus: 45 in total. These areas, lush with flowers and native plants that benefit bees, butterflies, and other pollinators, will be more than enough to re-certify UIUC as a “Bee Campus USA.”
In the near future, students and bees will be busily buzzing alongside each other, and — because more pollinator-friendly plants was one of the most popular pieces of feedback for the iCAP — helping each other out, too.
— Article by iSEE Communications Associate Gabe Lareau
iCAP Update: Engaging Our Campus
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is well past the halfway point from Illinois Climate Action Plan 2020 to iCAP 2025. It’s time to check in on each of the iCAP chapters to gauge progress, address the challenges our campus faces, and celebrate some achievements. This month, iSEE Communications Intern Gabe Lareau examines the Engagement chapter to see what the university is doing to immerse campus in a culture of sustainability. He also recaps the progress and challenges as we begin the drafting process for iCAP 2025 — which will mark 25 years (or hopefully less) until campus reaches carbon neutrality. View the full series >>>
They may seem like basic questions:
- Do you know how composting works?
- Are you up to date on what can be recycled, and what can’t?
- What do you know about the Illinois Climate Action Plan?
But for taking the pulse of sustainability literacy at the University of Illinois, these questions are vital to see how knowledgeable, up to snuff, and aware the campus actually is. Or, in another word, engaged.
For Codie Sterner, the word is literally in the job description. Appointed last year as Student Affairs’ Coordinator for Student Sustainability and the Engagement iCAP Team Chair, he knew that crafting a sustainability survey for university staff was of “exponential importance” early on. The Education Team is preparing a similar survey for incoming students.
According to Sterner, there’s a knowledge gap on campus: “There’s been a ton of interest with sustainability literacy. We’ve been getting questions like, ‘Hey, we would love to know what to do to make this a green event, but we actually don’t know what to do.’ ”
The sustainability literacy survey for university staff, due to be released soon, is just one of the main successes in the engagement realm. Others — successfully working with the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics (DIA) to join the Green Sports Alliance, increasing the number of Green Events certifications, and making regular updates to the iCAP Portal website — have been paramount to fulfilling the team’s iCAP 2020 objectives.
But, as with every other iCAP chapter’s objectives list, challenges still lie ahead. Most for the Engagement Team revolve around one fact: With a university as large and diverse as Illinois, the team is still trying to tailor messaging to as much of campus as possible.
Part of that process has been a heavier focus on some objectives over others and, in some cases, a complete restructuring. Take for example Objectives 7.4 and 7.5, respectively: using GivePulse — a volunteer, engagement, and fundraising service — to bolster campus-community collaboration on sustainability issues; and holding an annual Youth Sustainability Summit as part of a broader effort to teach children environmental stewardship.
For Sterner and the rest of the team members — all of whom have participated for only a year — evaluating if these objectives are the best ways to engage campus is a valid question.
“We dug into some of these objectives,” Sterner said. “Maybe some of them don’t necessarily need to be replaced, but they might not be as applicable today as they were originally. We’ve had to ask, ‘How do you reframe the question? How do we modernize it?’ A lot of stuff has changed since 2020.”
No argument there. But what to do in the meantime? The answer: Be as multi-purpose as a Swiss Army knife.
The Engagement Team has become the Illinois Climate Action Plan’s all-in-one resource. It is the iCAP’s central connectivity hub, Army Reserves, and PR team: If any of the iCAP teams need boots on the ground fast, the Engagement Team is ready to deploy.
Nowhere was this more apparent than during the university’s most recent Zero Waste events. “We had people asking where they could get volunteers,” Sterner said. “So one of our students on our team worked with the Office of Civic Life, and we were able to generate a lot of volunteers for these programs for the Zero Waste Team.”
Other ongoing sustainability programs, like Green Quad Day and “Sustainapalooza”— an event newly conceived by the Student Sustainability Leadership Council (SSLC) — were identified by the Engagement Team as opportunities to collaborate with other campus sustainability organizations in mobilizing students to get them involved in campus sustainability projects.
Or, put more succinctly by Sterner, “Get a group that’s passionate enough, realign everyone’s goals, and move forward rapidly.”
Sounds a lot like engagement.
Wrapping up our iCAP retrospective …
So, where do we go from here? Based on our roundup of progress and challenges since iCAP 2020, the University of Illinois community must keep three main things in mind if it truly wants to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions no later than 2050:
Energy, Energy, Energy
How each iCAP chapter directly impacts the university’s greenhouse gas emissions varies significantly. The vast majority of our carbon emissions come from how campus makes its energy, which is mostly through the fossil fuel-powered Abbott Power Plant.
Campus has pursued almost every option for renewable energy available — solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear — but all of those and more will be required to cut university emissions to zero.
The U of I has made progress on that front. In 2008, the university emitted 575,088 tons of greenhouse gases. In 2023, that dropped to 391,279 tons, within reach of the 2025 goal of 344,906 tons.
Individual actions, like turning off lights, unplugging electronics, using more efficient appliances, and taking shorter showers, can aid in reducing that figure only en masse. And still they will not be enough to get campus emissions to zero. Therefore, campus must continually emphasize updating its energy infrastructure as the priority.
It’s all interconnected
We’ve had a drought the past two years here in Champaign-Urbana, which has killed a significant number of trees that were planted on campus to help us reach our Land & Water goals. The lack of trees, in turn, makes our community less resilient to increased stormwater surge.
Just one example of how the problems that each iCAP chapter tackles are so intertwined. That idea applies to solutions as well.
Perhaps the most effective way to reduce university emissions isn’t by re-engineering solar panels to be a fraction of a percent more efficient. Instead, it could be through advocacy. Maybe the best way to get people to reduce driving time is by making walkways and bike paths more shaded and, therefore, more enjoyable. Or perhaps students in the university’s Environmental Leadership Program (a successfully completed objective in the Education chapter) could even lobby lawmakers to ban state institutions from using, or investing in, fossil fuels.
Thinking of the climate issue on our campus or anywhere through the lens of one single discipline, cause, or iCAP chapter only narrows our solutions. Seeing our individual work as something that can have vast repercussions — whether good or ill — can make us more aware and deliberate in our decisions as the university continues toward net zero.
Let the students lead
Finally, campus must never forget its greatest asset and very reason for existence: Its students. Our generation and those of the future will live with climate change’s worst effects — things that we were not necessarily responsible for creating.
As an individual of this campus and a resident of this planet, by far the most impactful thing you can do is get yourself, as well as others, involved. At a university with over 50,000 people, changing the energy infrastructure, cutting down on food and plastic waste, reducing energy and water demand, and advocating for land management practices that increase carbon storage can only be accomplished together.
“Since the iCAP 2020, we’ve made major progress to decrease our carbon footprint and improve environmental sustainability on campus. This is the result of cross-campus efforts led by Facilities & Services, the iCAP teams, iSEE, and other partners in sustainability efforts like the Illini Union, DIA, the Office of Student Success, Inclusion and Belonging, and many others – notably the Student Sustainability Committee and student groups that help mobilize support for sustainability initiatives,” said iSEE Sustainability Programs Coordinator Miriam Keep.
“There is still much work ahead of us, and we look forward to continuing to work across campus and build new partnerships to meet our long-term sustainability goals with the iCAP 2025!”
There is a place for everyone here, not just the scientists or the engineers or the communications experts. Skilled and willed people from every discipline and every background are needed to get our campus to net zero.
And by banding our voices together, we might advocate for the necessary change at a larger level: asking the Urbana-Champaign campus, the University of Illinois system, and the state that governs it to align their wallet with their words.
For centuries, we Illini have gone on to do great things in the world. That process does not have to start after we walk across the graduation stage. If we can truly change our complex, large university into a bastion of climate action, more organizations — other universities, corporations, governments — will see proof that sustainability is truly possible, and then, hopefully, follow in our footsteps.
iCAP Update: Preserving Land & Water
As a land-grant institution, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has a responsibility to acknowledge the historical context in which it exists. We are currently on the lands of the Peoria, Kaskaskia, Peankashaw, Wea, Miami, Mascoutin, Odawa, Sauk, Mesquaki, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Chickasaw Nations. It is necessary for us to acknowledge these Native Nations and for us to work with them as we move forward as an institution with Native peoples at the core of our efforts.
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is well past the halfway point from Illinois Climate Action Plan 2020 to iCAP 2025. It’s time to check in on each of the iCAP chapters to gauge progress, address the challenges our campus faces, and celebrate some achievements. This month, iSEE Communications Intern Gabe Lareau examines the Land & Water chapter to seewhat the university is doing to properly preserve its most valuable natural resources. View the full series >>>
Land and water are integral to our survival and have never been more threatened. Climate change exacerbates droughts and floods, groundwater is being rapidly depleted globally, and, according to Our World in Data, “tree loss in 2019 was 24 million hectares. That’s an area the size of the United Kingdom.”
Thankfully, on its little patch of prairie, the University of Illinois Land & Water iCAP Team is helping shepherd progress toward a more sustainable future where campus doesn’t just use its land and water resources, but actively cares for and replenishes them by reducing water consumption, increasing pollinator habitat, and continuing to plant native tree species across campus (to name a few initiatives).
Here are seven ways the University of Illinois is caring for land and water:
Reducing Water Consumption
As with any other resource, whenever water is wasted so is all of the energy (and therefore CO2) used in its extraction, distribution, and return to the waste system. However, water’s biggest carbon footprint revolves around how it’s heated. On campus, that heat comes from Abbott Power Plant, which runs on fossil fuels.
Therefore, reducing campus’ collective water consumption is paramount to not only preserving our potable resources, but also ensuring the success of the iCAP’s overarching goal of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. In this regard, campus is staying on track.
The iCAP prescribes that campus “reduce potable water consumption to 721,500 kilogallons/year” by 2024 — a 45% reduction from 2008, which saw the university use more than 1.3 million kgal of potable water — enough to fill 2,563 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Fortunately, campus potable water use steadily declined between 2008 and 2021, despite a growing student population, with a low of 652,833 kgal — a reduction of almost 50 percent — used in 2021. That’s thanks in part to initiatives like University Housing’s decision to no longer use and wash dining trays, which saves 110,940 gallons a year and replacing plumbing fixtures with low-flow replacements.
Recent campus water use has ticked slightly upward (in 2023, usage was 40,000 kgal above the goal) — likely in part because of two straight drought years. It is a warning, however, that complacency in our individual habits and institutional practices can spell real consequences.
2024 is far from over, and if campus makes a concerted effort to reduce its consumption, the 721,500 kgal figure is reachable. It will take future initiatives, like a state policy that would allow using reclaimed municipal or industrial wastewater to irrigate the South Farms, for campus to continue seeing its water use decrease and carbon output diminish.
Designing Resilient Landscapes
In 2020, the latest iCAP posited five main suggestions for campus to have truly resilient landscapes. Resilient, in this case, meaning that the flora and fauna who live on the University of Illinois urban landscape will be able to better weather climate change’s effects.
The first recommendation from the iCAP was a Campus Landscape Master Plan, which was completed in 2022. When implemented, it will not only beautify and buttress campus with native, pollinator-friendly plantings, but also increase tree cover and overall permeable surface area.
Those pollinator-supportive plantings will be installed much more quickly, as five new grounds workers are set to be hired by Facilities & Services (F&S), according to Campus Landscape Architect and iCAP Team Chair Brent Lewis. An increased number of hands on the ground, potentially including two new tree surgeons on campus, satisfies another major recommendation to make campus lands more resilient — and community members safer. After all, a branch knocked loose from a major storm has less of a chance of falling on your head if tree crews can get to it first.
The last major recommendation for making campus more climate resilient is the writing of a Rainwater Management Plan — a process that started in February 2024 and will take the rest of the year, Lewis said. Farnsworth Group, a local architectural firm, will conduct an analysis that will survey where water pools most on campus and causes the most damage. Then, according to Lewis, campus will be able to determine ways to better absorb rainwater into the ground and use the water draining into storm sewers more efficiently.
Planting Trees
Perhaps no effort pays greater dividends to fight climate change than planting trees. Trees have myriad benefits — offering habitats for animals, providing shade in increasingly warm summers, and loosening soil, which increases rainwater uptake, to say nothing of literally sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. For free.
The iCAP 2020 prescribed that there be 1,500 additional trees on campus by the end of this year. Lewis and the Land & Water Team are right on track: “We’re planting 300 trees a year.” However, the ever-warming climate is causing problems for some of the new trees.
“The thing that’s been really hard is that in the past two years we’ve had droughts, and those droughts have killed off a bunch of trees,” Lewis said.
Nevertheless, each new cohort, 300-strong, continues to grow and sequester carbon.
Where exactly are all of these 300 trees a year going?
“The campus is a lot bigger than you think,” Lewis said. “I’m doing trees on the South Quad; I’m doing trees by the Bell Tower. I’m planting trees by Architecture on Lorado Taft Drive. One area that has always bothered me is that very open walkway south of Madigan Lab on Gregory Drive. We’re going to tree that whole thing.”
Planting random trees in random places does not do much for campus landscapes — a great deal of thought must be put into what kind of plantings are used. In a given area, “the industry standard is 30/20/10,” Lewis said, meaning that the ideal diversity of trees is “no more than 30% from one family, 20% from one genus, and 10% from one species.”
Lewis says campus is riding more of a 19/15/8. Not perfect — he pointed out that few municipalities are — but still better than many. If campus planted only a few types of trees, as many cities unwisely do, the entire population would be one pest or disease away from being wiped out. And, along with them, a natural carbon sink.
Increasing Pollinator Habitat
In 2018, the University of Illinois was officially certified as a “Bee Campus USA,” a designation awarded by the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. Becoming a “Bee Campus” involves feeding pollinators with native and biodiverse plants in adorably named but effective “Pollinator Pockets,” raising awareness in the local community, and ridding away pests with as few pesticides as possible.
While smaller in scale than some iCAP objectives, this remains one of the most important. Pollinators — bees, butterflies, even bats — are an integral, but threatened, pollination system that our food supply depends on.
According to Lewis, campus is looking to renew its annual certification as a “Bee Campus USA” — an easy task considering that there are 45 pollinator-supportive locations across campus, surpassing the 39 required in the iCAP by April 2024.
But climate action is not just about checking a box. It’s a continual transformation of habits, and the Land & Water team continues to look at possible locations as potential pollinator oases. During a recent meeting, the Team discussed the South Farms, specifically where the Embarras River crosses through the cropland. Lewis thought, “You know, maybe we should look at those corridors and see if we can get 30 acres of prairie in there.” On first impression, the College of ACES was amenable to the idea, he said. “I didn’t get any pushback.” Meeting minutes from the Land & Water Team identify the Department of Crop Sciences as a possible funder for a Prairie STRIPs project. If completed, it would “decrease erosion, pull pollutants out, and support pollinators,” according to the team.
Building Green Infrastructure
Beyond the beautiful landscapes, buzzing pollinator pockets, and thousands of trees, much of the campus is obviously still brick and mortar. When it rains, flat roofs and roads are unable to soak up the water, leading to flooding and, sometimes, extensive damage.
That is why Green Infrastructure is so important. Retrofitting the landscape with more permeable surfaces, ideally soil, can soak up the excess water. The Red Oak Rain Garden and the Illinois Street Residence Hall green roof are just two of the many examples of Green Infrastructure on campus. As of early spring 2024, 48 green infrastructure projects are active on campus, with another being installed by early summer, meaning we will reach our goal of 49 by the end of this year.
Planting Cover Crops
To increase their yields and protect their livelihoods, farmers enrich their crops with nitrogen- and phosphorus-rich fertilizers. These elements make their way into the water cycle and are eventually washed away and deposited into rivers — in the case of the South Farms, all the way to the Mississippi.
Why does this matter? Well, certain types of algae and phytoplankton thrive on these two elements and, when the resulting algal bloom dies, its decomposition sucks the oxygen out of the water — killing all life in the area. This phenomenon is the cause of the Gulf of Mexico’s annual summertime “Dead Zone” — a lifeless region fueled by fertilizer chemicals from midwestern farms.
Cover crops — flora planted in agricultural fields during the offseason — are integral to cutting off nitrogen and phosphorus from making their way into the Gulf and threatening its biodiversity. Like Green Infrastructure, keeping these plants as tenants during the winter ensures that farm soil stays permeable and the nitrogen and phosphorus are taken up as nutrients instead of washed away as waste. They may also help reduce erosion, keeping phosphorus-rich soil out of nearby water sources.
Planting cover crops on all 3,343 acres of the University’s South Farms, while technically possible, is not feasible. Some of the South Farms’ acreage, such as the 321-acre Energy Farm, houses experimental fields, and cover crops could be a confounding variable in an experiment. The good news, according to Lewis, is that the vast majority of the South Farms are cultivated for revenue, not research. Cover crops, by the way, can increase yields while also building soil organic matter — which can help increase water-holding capacity — and acts as a reservoir for nutrients.
The Department of Crop Sciences, which owns half the South Farms acreage, has 1,100 tillable acres of cropland in the South Farms, of which 18% have cover crops, per the Land & Water Team’s March 1 meeting minutes. The Department of Animal Sciences, which owns all but 5% of the rest of the South Farms, has cover crops on “13.6% plus or minus” of its land, Lewis said. While these are promising numbers for the South Farms’ two biggest occupants — and calculations are still being done to determine exact acreages — campus is likely still short of the iCAP’s 20% cover crop total.
Integrated Pest Management
The development of an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) plan, if adopted campus-wide, would mean an environmental boon. IPM overlaps with nearly every Land & Water iCAP objective: The university tree canopy can’t increase if it keeps falling victim to invasive species, and eradicating pests leaves more room for pollinators to flourish.
For those who prefer to spray pesticide and call it a day, Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is a more holistic approach to managing the invasive insects and weeds that plague campus land. According to University of Illinois Extension, proper IPM “uses all available control practices such as crop rotation (changing what’s grown in a field), selecting resistant varieties (plants resistant to pests), mechanical cultivation, changing planting and harvesting times, biological control (using other living organisms to control pests), and chemical control.” It’s not just a spray and pray — using a variety of approaches prevents excess amounts of pesticides into the land and water.
Lewis is coordinating with the grounds departments from F&S, the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics (DIA), and Campus Recreation to finalize a coordinated Integrated Pest Management Plan. “It’s been interesting and is just something we need to tick off.” (Pun intention unknown.)
iCAP Update: Greener Transportation
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is well past the halfway point from Illinois Climate Action Plan 2020 to iCAP 2025. It’s time to check in on each of the iCAP chapters to gauge progress, address the challenges our campus faces, and celebrate some achievements. This month, iSEE Communications Intern Gabe Lareau examines the Transportation chapter to see if the university is on the road to fully sustainable transport by 2050. View the full series >>>
America’s overuse of the internal combustion engine has resulted in one of the most visual reminders we have of our reliance on fossil fuels: the automobile, with its inescapable “honking, skidding, speeding, sputtering, and backfiring” and “emission of toxic fumes and filthy exhaust-pollution,” as eloquently described in The French Dispatch.
Is it possible to break this addiction? What will transportation of the future look like? Many have offered their fair share of outlandish ideas, like Walt Disney’s beloved monorail, the flying cars in Back to the Future 2, or Jean-Marc Coté’s early 20th century drawing of … a whale-bus?
Whether high-speed rail or high-speed whale, the future of transportation will have to be more sustainable. In 2021, every single mode of transportation in the United States, from Navy aircraft carriers to amusement park go-karts, contributed 1,775 million metric tons of CO2 equivalents to the atmosphere. That makes up 28% of overall U.S. emissions and represents the largest contribution from any one economic sector.
The urgency of this issue, and the important part it will play in getting the University of Illinois to net zero carbon by 2050, is not lost on the Transportation iCAP Topical Team. Since 2020, the team has seen progress on some of its biggest tasks — planning to electrify the campus fleet, which has already significantly reduced emissions due to fewer trips taken in more efficient vehicles; establishing an Electric Vehicle Task Force; and continuing implementation of the 2014 Campus Bike Plan among them.
But because “transportation” is so broad a topic, there are still a few bumps in the road. This mostly involves the copious amounts of emissions generated from air travel. To make that more sustainable, or any other form of transportation for that matter, the university community has three choices available.
First, campus can upgrade its equipment and infrastructure to decrease carbon emissions, like the iCAP objective of developing written plans to electrify 80% of campus’ fleets. Second, individuals can switch to low- or zero-carbon commuting alternatives by choosing to carpool, walk, ride a bicycle, or take mass transit. If neither of the first two “active transportation” options are feasible, then the university must negate the carbon it generates by purchasing responsibly sourced offsets. That’s especially true for air travel, as widespread sustainable aviation is decades off and biking across the country is out of the question save for a strong few.
To make campus transportation fully sustainable by 2050, the U of I will need to do a combination of all three.
In terms of upgrading equipment, electric vehicles (EVs) have surged in popularity nationwide as well as around the world, for a variety of reasons. Their range has steadily increased, and because they run on lithium-ion battery power they present a lower- or zero-carbon way to get around compared to traditional cars, depending on if the battery was charged by renewable energy.
Facilities & Services, which operates hundreds of trucks and cars, has introduced a few EVs and hybrid vehicles into its carpool; it also has a sustainable fleet plan aimed at reducing fuel usage and vehicles and introducing new technologies.
The iCAP prescribes that, by the end of this year, the university should have “written replacement plans for 80% of campus fleets” and that an Electric Vehicle Task Force should be well underway in exploring all options relating to EVs and charging stations for campus. These two objectives have been among the Transportation Team’s top priorities this past year, according to Chair Sarthak Prasad, Sustainable Transportation Assistant at F&S.
“During Fall 2023, we were mainly focusing on the fleet replacement plan that we had worked on in May,” Prasad said. “Since then, that recommendation was approved.”
In that recommendation are two preliminary but vital steps of establishing what exactly a “fleet” is, then establishing a “point of contact” for each fleet.
Deciding on what constitutes a “fleet” is kind of like determining the difference between a really big puddle and a small lake. Units like F&S or the Division of Intercollegiate Athletics (DIA) have large numbers of vehicles. But “there are departments that have one or two vehicles that are assigned to a certain researcher or a lab group,” Prasad said. Will those few internal combustion engines get a free pass because they’re not part of a larger group of vehicles?
Whatever the verdict, the next step will be asking each department to designate an existing employee to take on the responsibilities of a “fleet administrator.” Fleet administrators will coordinate with F&S to develop replacement plans with more sustainable options, like hybrids or EVs. Once a point of contact is established, “then communication will be much more efficient and coherent,” Prasad said.
Once all of these electric vehicles hit campus, they obviously will need to be charged. Currently, campus has 18 individual charging stations across six locations. Many, many more will be needed once EVs inevitably overtake the university district’s streets. That is why, in 2022, the Electric Vehicle Task Force — operated by the University Parking Department — contracted a third party to conduct an analysis for possible EV infrastructure on campus.
For the rest of the campus community, individuals with the means can invest in an electric car, which may be eligible for a $7,500 federal tax credit and a state credit of up to $4,000. Others who can’t afford an EV can turn to alternative means of sustainable transportation.
This leads us to our second way of mitigating transportation emissions: changing individual habits. According to Prasad, the average commute distance for university faculty and staff is about 7 miles. While that would entail a 30-minute bike ride — perhaps daunting to many commuters — those who live 4 miles or fewer from campus are at an entirely bikeable distance, aided by Champaign County’s mercifully flat topography and the university’s excellent bicycling infrastructure.
That infrastructure didn’t become exemplary by simple happenstance. The Transportation Team has followed the recommendations of the 2014 campus bike plan and worked to improve it; an updated draft will be submitted by the end of Spring 2024, according to Prasad. Until then, the U of I renewed its “Silver” status as a Bicycle Friendly University from The League of American Bicyclists in 2023. However, “our goal for the next cycle will be gold,” Prasad said.
If you’re closer to the university than average, walking is always an option that is not only sustainable, but also alleviates stress. Nor should we forget our partners at the Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District (MTD). The MTD not only has its own climate action plan, MTD2071, but also four hydrogen-fueled, zero-emission buses that multiply the immediate reduction in emissions that comes from using public transit. And don’t forget: Anyone with an I Card can ride the MTD free of charge.
If none of these are an option, whether due to disability or chronically sleeping in, some employees may still be able to cut down on commuting by working a hybrid or fully remote schedule. Nixing the commute is an easy way to reduce emissions and therefore make campus cleaner and greener — a win-win, especially for those who prefer to work in their pajamas.
The options for sustainable commutes — “Bus, Bike, and Hike” as they’re known in the iCAP — are integral to the Transportation Team’s Commuter Program. This initiative, aimed at reducing the number of parked cars on campus by asking commuters to relinquish their parking permits, was launched in 2023 and seeks to have 100 registered members by the end of this year.
According to Prasad, the pilot program saw mixed success, with opportunities for improvement: “What we saw during the pilot was people signing up who don’t have a parking permit. That’s not a bad thing because it’s celebrating those people who ride a bicycle or take the bus or walk to work. But the intent behind this program was to reduce the number of parking passes on campus, which unfortunately did not happen.”
The Commuter Program is an attempt to accelerate a larger trend. The number of faculty, staff, and students who commute to campus by driving alone has steadily decreased for nearly two decades. In 2007, the percentage was in the stratosphere at 74%. In 2011, it dropped to 65%; in 2019, 60%. In 2022, partially due to the effects of the pandemic, campus saw its biggest reduction over the shortest time — 55%. This figure sets campus up to meet its 50% goal by 2025.
Such a radical reduction is due to multiple factors. Since the late 2000s-early 2010s, campus bicycle and walking infrastructure quality has dramatically increased. But simple infrastructure can’t actually make anyone do anything; individual choices have compounded to bring about large reductions in driving on campus, and therefore large reductions in carbon emissions.
The largest of those carbon emissions, air travel, is unfortunately out of individual control. While, of course, no one commutes to campus daily via plane, university-related plane trips are a significant factor in campus’ contribution to global climate change. Air travel is most commonly used in three separate areas: study abroad programs, conference travel, and athletic games — a metric that is surely set to increase, as the Big Ten has now expanded to the West Coast.
The best way to reduce air travel emissions is, obviously, not to travel by air. The COVID-19 pandemic also made teleconferencing, a sustainable alternative, more mainstream. When taking an airplane is absolutely necessary, the only realistic option to travel sustainably is to purchase carbon offsets. Work toward a university-wide system has stalled, putting the iCAP’s goal of a 50% reduction by 2025 in serious jeopardy.
Until then, we will have to rely on individual choice to reduce air travel emissions — a mixed blessing. Mixed because rallying some 50,000 individuals to achieve a common goal is a daunting prospect. But it’s also a blessing because when we reach our targets — as campus is projected to do for total emissions in 2025 — anything becomes possible.
iCAP Update: Toward ‘Zero Waste’
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is past the halfway point from Illinois Climate Action Plan 2020 to iCAP 2025. It’s time to check in on each of the iCAP chapters to gauge progress, address the challenges our campus faces, and celebrate some achievements. This month, iSEE Communications Intern Gabe Lareau examines the Zero Waste chapter to see if the university is creating a culture of reuse in order to reach its goal of being a zero waste campus. View the full series >>>
On Sept. 22, 1985, Memorial Stadium shattered its attendance record. A crowd of 85,000 descended on the home of Illinois football for the first-ever FarmAid concert — a 12-hour charity event founded by Willie Nelson and featuring a star-studded lineup. While the concert was a success and raised more than $9 million, no one knows how much waste was recycled at the event — if at all. In 1985, only 10% of Americans consistently recycled.
Thirty-eight years and one day after, Memorial Stadium hosted more than 53,000 people for an Illinois football game and the first-ever Zero Waste Tailgate. This time, we know exactly how much was recycled: more than 1,000 pounds.
A frequent FarmAid musical guest, the late folk singer Pete Seeger, would have approved of that number. One of Seeger’s famous quotes reads just below the email signature of U of I Zero Waste Coordinator Daphne Hulse: “If it cannot be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, resold, recycled, or composted, then it should be restricted, redesigned, or removed from production.”
It seems that Hulse wants to make sure that everything, not just recyclables, comes full circle.
Hulse, who is part of Facilities & Services (F&S), is an integral part of the Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP) Zero Waste Team. Its eponymous mission is the most straightforward of any iCAP Team. Getting to that point, though — and thereby helping the campus get to net zero carbon emissions by 2050 — is anything but. Deciding what is sustainably sourced, changing the habits of the public, and then recycling or composting what is left behind on a campus of more than 50,000 people is no easy feat.
Nevertheless, the Zero Waste Team has been racking up successes. Partnering with iSEE, Coca-Cola, and the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics (DIA), Hulse and F&S coordinated two zero waste basketball games in 2022-23 and two zero waste football tailgates last fall. Between the four events, volunteers helped fans recycle 2,560 pounds of bottles and cans. But the biggest takeaway, according to Hulse, is how these events illustrate how campus can “institutionalize sustainable waste management practices” into every major athletic event. Additionally, the nearly 700 (and counting!) reusable water bottle-friendly “hydration stations” across campus also cut waste by providing an alternative to single-use plastic bottles.
Those two efforts combined into “Be Orange, Go Green,” a campaign from iSEE, F&S, and other campus partners that encourages Illini fans, students, faculty, and staff to move away from single-use plastic water bottles. With DIA allowing empty, clear refillable containers into athletic venues newly equipped with hydration stations, nearly every facility on campus — whether used for the academic grind or the athletic gridiron — has the potential to be free of plastic water bottles.
Campus is expanding ways to reuse its waste, too. The university’s Waste Transfer Station has been sorting out recyclables since the ’80s; University Housing’s new “Grind2Energy” systems make energy out of dorm food leftovers instead of just letting them rot in a landfill; and since 2001, the University YMCA and its partners have held an annual “Dump and Run” — a program that puts quality goods discarded during move-out in May into the hands of charitable organizations to be reused — or repurposed by folks moving into new apartments at an annual August sale.
The reason for all these programs is obvious: Everyone wastes — from Swanlund’s reams of paper to Noyes’ lab leftovers. That also means everyone has the opportunity to cut down on their own waste — a process that starts well before anything is actually bought and requires reconsidering what one actually needs.
Not so long ago, the university’s various departments, divisions, offices, and institutes got everything they needed through “Banner” — a campus system that sent out any Purchase Orders (POs) printed out via snail mail to vendors. Because buying in bulk is cheaper, these POs looked more like Santa’s list than a quick request. The 2020 iCAP made a conservative estimate that just the process of buying things for campus used over 75,000 sheets of paper every year.
Enter “iBuy,” a purchasing platform introduced by the University of Illinois System in 2018 that is housed entirely online. Not only does iBuy cut down on waste, but it could also inform university buyers on what option is the most sustainable.
“Something that has been suggested is including information or recommendations within iBuy,” said Hulse, who is developing an Environmentally Preferable Procurement Plan for campus — one of the top priorities for the Zero Waste Team in the Spring 2024 semester. “For example, when you’re looking at a product, you could see if it’s locally recyclable or sourced ethically.”
While this option isn’t available on iBuy (yet), more university buyers are prioritizing sustainability over cost. “I think there’s a lot of interest from staff and faculty who are buying stuff to know that they’re making a choice that is sustainable for campus. We receive a lot of inquiries and get a lot of questions about that,” Hulse said.
In an ideal world, whatever is needed is purchased sustainably, used entirely, then reused or recycled into something else. Of course, that’s rarely the case and waste is bound to be generated. Campus generated 5,846.83 tons of waste during the 2022-23 school year to be exact — the equivalent of about 3,500 mid-sized cars, 1,400 elephants, or 17 Falcon 9 Rockets. Unfortunately, that figure puts campus behind where it needs to be.
In the 2020 iCAP, the latest data available from 2019 clocked campus waste at 5,049 tons. That number set the basis for a 10% reduction by 2024 to 4,544 tons. If campus is to reach that goal by next year, it would need to reduce its current total waste by 22% — nearly a quarter. It is technically possible; the 2022 fiscal year saw just over 5,000 tons of waste, meaning that 2023 could be an outlier. Nevertheless, the university seems unlikely to reach that 4,544-ton objective on time.
How do we rectify this recent increase in campus waste? By improving and increasing its recycling infrastructure, campus can establish a “Zero Waste Culture” which, with a strong enough foothold, can influence individual choice.
Say you just aced an exam and decided to treat yourself with Starbucks at the Illini Union. After savoring your mocha, that one-use cup has become useless garbage. On your way out, you spot a “3 Bin” — a receptacle with three clearly labeled containers to deposit paper, bottles and cans, or “landfill waste.” These types of bins (made out of recycled materials!) are the university’s most effective way of what Hulse described as “intercepting at the source.”
“These three-stream bins work so well because when you have a setup where people have to make a choice about landfilling or recycling, they tend to do better than just random stray bins with no signage,” Hulse said.
As for that Starbucks cup — made of paper, but lined with plastic and stained with coffee and milk — it has to go in the trash. Not great for overall campus waste, but it’s important to at least put it in the right bin. Even better than that would have been to bring your own reusable tumbler or coffee mug (and utensils for that matter) — nearly every café on campus will make your drink in them. After all, as Hulse points out, “recycling is important, and a good baseline for sustainable activity, but challenging ourselves to cut the waste entirely is transformational.”
When you throw away something in a university building, all of it accumulates at the Waste Transfer Station — a collection center unique to the University of Illinois, and one of the few in the country where recyclables are hand-sorted, baled, and sold to offset recycling costs. Aside from construction waste — 50% of which is recycled, by the way — garbage arrives at the station in a tri-color collage. Clear bags denote trash collected in common areas, blue bags from recycling bins, and black bags from bathrooms and labs. Workers painstakingly sort through the clear bags to separate recyclables (paper, cardboard, plastic, and aluminum) from the trash. The black bags go straight to the landfill, along with whatever errant recyclables were thrown in the wrong bin.
The best way to make the process less painstaking — and to lighten the load of the Waste Transfer Station’s eight sorters, who can only handle so much — is to do your own sorting on the front end. When recyclables are thrown into the trash on a large scale — at, say, a tailgate — the system that separates what can be salvaged from what can’t is overwhelmed, leading to higher costs and potentially more waste.
To help combat this, iSEE funded a project in early 2023 to upgrade the Waste Transfer Station with an automatic waste classification system. Using machine learning, cameras focused on the waste conveyor belt will be able to recognize six different types of waste. Once the new system is installed, the station should be much more efficient at identifying trash from recyclables and “determining which types of waste are the most prevalent and thus most crucial to cut down on,” according to Hulse.
When people aren’t careless, properly recycling their beer and soda cans in the State Farm Center or using the correct bin for their plastic water bottles during Quad Day, the waste transfer system can function normally. Visiting fans attending Illini games and especially new students during Welcome Week will also realize that they’re attending a university with a large, and growing, culture of Zero Waste.
While establishing that culture is certainly environmentally beneficial, the way it relates to the iCAP’s ultimate goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 is a little less straightforward. But make no mistake, it is just as impactful. Using less not only reduces waste but is directly related to how many greenhouse gases we emit. Everything has its own carbon cost; when you waste something, you also waste the energy that was expended in extracting, transporting, manufacturing, distributing, and, of course, wasting it.
Nowhere is this truer than with food. When any organic waste ends up just sitting in an open-air landfill, it can let off even more greenhouse gases as it decomposes. “CO2 is indeed one of them,” Hulse said. “But the other specific greenhouse gas with food waste is methane.”
Methane (CH4) warms the planet at 23 times the rate of carbon dioxide. One way to make sure that statistic doesn’t become reality is to only take as much food as you know you can eat. If you eat in the dining halls regularly, the leftover food you leave on the conveyor belt immediately becomes waste — and it adds up quickly.
“Sustainability-wise it’s amazing to reduce food waste, and in terms of our costs it’s also amazing to reduce food waste,” said iCAP Zero Waste Team member Thurman Etchison, University Housing’s Assistant Director of Dining Services’ Facilities and Equipment. “In a regular week during the school year, we’ll see about 20,000 pounds of food waste.” Over a 16-week semester, that clocks in at 320,000 pounds of uneaten and wasted food.
Dining Services has taken action to reduce the environmental cost of food waste. Rather than going straight to the landfill, leftover food from all university dining halls is ground into one of five “Grind2Energy” holding tanks. The resulting, certainly pungent, slurry is sent to the Urbana-Champaign Sanitary District, where it is deposited into an anaerobic digester that turns it into fertilizer and, you guessed it, methane.
But this methane does not leak into the atmosphere in the same way as if the food were in a landfill. Instead, the gas is eventually burned to generate energy. The full Grind2Energy cycle also ensures that dining hall food scraps are not wasted but instead used to provide a third of the electricity and half of the heating demand for the Sanitary District — thus reducing the need for other fossil fuels.
Grind2Energy is the best system possible, but not perfect: It still emits greenhouse gases — burning methane results in CO2 — albeit far less potent ones. The best weapons in our arsenal to combat food waste are individual decisions.
There lies the good news amidst all the waste. It’s hard to individually change where you get your energy or make your community more climate-resilient all by yourself. However, minimizing waste, choosing to recycle, and managing food waste are some of the easiest ways an individual can fight climate change.
When that attitude is amplified on an institutional level, nearly anything is possible. For an example, look no further than “The Nation’s Premier College Marching Band,” the Marching Illini. Audition information, drill formations, and sheet music were formerly done on paper for the nearly 400-member organization, but the band is now an entirely paperless operation.
Now that students read music, drill, and check in for attendance on their phones, the Marching Illini save nearly $35,000 a year and thousands more sheets of paper. By rethinking what was necessary, and reevaluating how to reduce waste, the band’s environmental impact shrinks with each game.
Perhaps on some (hopefully soon) future Saturday in the fall, when the Marching Illini take the field at Memorial Stadium, it will be a Zero Waste halftime at a Zero Waste game at a Zero Waste university.
iCAP Update: Educating Our Entire Campus about Climate Change
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is already past the halfway point from Illinois Climate Action Plan 2020 to iCAP 2025. It’s time to check in with each of the iCAP topical chapters to gauge progress, address the challenges our campus faces, and celebrate some achievements. This month, iSEE Communications Intern Gabe Lareau examines the Education chapter to see how the university is keeping up with its commitment to give students a deeper understanding of what it means to be sustainable. View the full series >>>
Among the University of Illinois’ many offices, departments, and levels of administration, one core mission rises to the top: to educate students.
The education component to the climate fight is just as vital. Amidst wildfires, heatwaves, and floods, educating the populace about our current situation has become a difficult, uphill battle with dire consequences. In America, only 37% of adults say dealing with climate change should be a top priority.
Education has the potential to raise awareness, denote the best sustainability practices, dissipate misinformation, and spur action. In the 2020 Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP), the Education chapter laid out six objectives to do just that.
Its achievements are inspiring. The Education iCAP Team’s loftiest assignments have become its greatest successes, namely working to incorporate sustainability into general education, expanding opportunities for graduate students, and developing the Environmental Leadership Program. The team’s progress has put the university’s sustainability curricula into a strong position going into the 2025 iCAP.
Here’s an update on the Education Team’s progress, objective by objective:
6.1: “Broaden the availability of sustainability education, beginning with first-year student orientation and continuing through commencement.”
As the first and foremost objective in the Education portion of the iCAP, the successful completion of incorporating sustainability into the general education track is vital. If completed, it will affect the curriculum of every one of the university’s 35,000 undergraduate students — a potentially massive impact.
To ensure the success of this goal, iCAP 2020 detailed four possible options, two of which have since been eliminated. The prospects of creating a first-year student sustainability seminar and implementing a sustainability unit in 100-level required classes like LAS 101 were deemed not engaging enough to be effective by students.
The most viable option, according to Education Team member Eric Green, is incorporating a sustainability general education requirement. Its proposal is written, and “now the team is building support,” said Green, who also serves as iSEE’s Senior Academic Program Instructor/Advisor.
The sustainability requirement will most likely be a “General Education Requirement Option” within the Natural Sciences & Technology requisite. Whereas students have two choices within this requisite today — Physical Sciences and Life Sciences — fulfilling this objective would give them option of choosing a class (or several) within a “Sustainability” category.
If Natural Sciences & Technology isn’t their cup of tea, Green said that sustainability options within the Social & Behavioral Sciences and Humanities & the Arts Gen-Ed requirements are still on the table.
To be clear, completing this iCAP objective wouldn’t add to the number of General Education classes students would have to take. Instead, it would simply highlight sustainability classes on campus and, hopefully, encourage more undergraduates to incorporate sustainability sometime during their higher education.
In summer 2023, Green and the Education Team hosted “open house” meetings with various department heads to refine the official proposal. After meeting with each college’s deans in late fall, Green hopes that the Education Team’s proposal for a sustainability general education requirement will be approved by the Urbana-Champaign Senate near the end of Spring 2024.
The fourth and final option of a sustainability workshop is a real possibility and currently in development, according to Green. If it came to fruition, it would most likely resemble the First Year Consent and Relationship Education (FYCARE) workshop on sexual assault required for all incoming students.
6.2: “Establish a comprehensive online repository for courses and academic programs with sustainability content.”
On the iSEE website, under “Academics,” students can access hundreds of courses that deal with sustainability, energy conservation, and environmentalism. These courses — everything from Urban Transportation Planning to Marine Biology — span 50 different departments at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
However, that public list is no longer updated regularly. With departments changing course offerings every semester and certain courses changing curricula because of new instructors, keeping up with where each department stands on offering sustainability courses is a monumental task. On top of that, “undergrads weren’t really using it,” said Green, referring to the original course list.
Changing up its strategy, the Education Team is revising the course list for the latest semester and streamlining how students can search for available courses. The idea is that inputting keywords to search by topic instead of by name will allow students to more efficiently search for sustainability courses that align with their interests.
And while this objective was intended as a resource for students, it also serves a dual purpose in the university’s self-reporting.
The Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS) is a tool created by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) that catalogs and rates how sustainable higher education institutions are across a variety of categories.
In the 2022 report, the University of Illinois scored 4.31 points out of a possible 14 in the “Academic Courses” credit, under the “Curriculum” subcategory. But AASHE is exploring a new scoring system for its Education category. Once that process is complete, the university’s STARS rating — and its reputation as a nationwide sustainability leader — should see improvement.
6.3: “Launch an undergraduate Environmental Leadership Program (ELP).”
“It’s a thing!” as Green says.
The Environmental Leadership program (ELP) launched in Spring 2021 and has increased its enrollment in each subsequent year; the most recent cohort in Spring 2023 enrolled 25 students. The program consists of an introductory, two-day workshop and meetings throughout the semester that culminate in visits to both Champaign and Urbana City Council meetings and a trip to the State Capitol in Springfield.
During the program, students learn the inner workings of state and local politics as well as how to craft a unique message that effectively advocates for the environment. The students put these strategies to use as they actively lobby for specific environmental policies with lawmakers.
Next spring, students will also visit Chicago during Spring Break to talk with business leaders about corporate sustainability, Green said.
6.4: “Develop a sustainability internship program by partnering with businesses, nonprofits, local governments, and cultural institutions in Central Illinois.”
During the Spring 2021 semester, ENVS 491 student Carissa Mysliwiec submitted a report on the possibility of a University of Illinois Sustainability Internship Program. After a semester’s worth of meetings with local and regional governments and organizations, Mysliwiec calculated a budget upwards of $5,000 per intern and estimated the program would consist of five to 10 students.
Unfortunately, since then no new updates have emerged. As of Fall 2023, the funding for this objective has not materialized and the possibility of a sustainability internship program is on hold.
6.5: “Partner with The Career Center to help students explore and discover career interests related to sustainability.”
Like so many organizations post-COVID, both iSEE and the University Career Center have dealt with staffing shortages that have stunted certain projects, this objective numbering among them.
Now that iSEE has a new Sustainability Coordinator and the Career Center is hiring new staff, Green is confident that an in-depth collaboration can finally take off to make finding careers in sustainability an easy process for students. Until then, this objective remains on hold.
6.6: “Offer a new graduate certificate in sustainability by 2024.”
Thanks to one of iSEE’s directors and a close institutional partner, the Education Team has so far had its work taken care of in making a graduate certificate in sustainability a reality.
Luis Rodríguez is a U of I Associate Professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering as well as iSEE’s Associate Director for Education & Outreach. His vision for a “virtual resource center,” as Green put it, would manifest in the form of a website that would make it easier than ever for graduate students, faculty, and staff to share sustainability research and resources.
At the same time, the Prairie Research Institute was recently awarded an “Investment for Growth Grant” from the Office of the Provost to help develop courses within the proposed graduate certificate.
Both developments, while not definitive steps forward, set the stage for a graduate certificate to happen eventually. “Right now, we probably won’t hit 2024 and the timeframe is unknown,” said Green.
By taking the initiative to find solutions, the Education Team and its partners are leading in sustainability by example: exactly what the university expects its students to do. But, in order to do that, we must first equip students with the tools they need to succeed: in a word, educate.