The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign received an honorable mention in the 2015 Illinois Green Office Challenge, for efforts at the Physical Plant Service Building. F&S earned points by completing specific activities to reduce waste and save energy and water, which help make resources and cost reductions the norm in workplaces. Some of the activities completed at PPSB included tracking energy use, utilizing duplex printing, encouraging staff to commute by bike, and improving the building’s recycling program.  A list of the completed activites is available below.

The Green Power Partnership is a voluntary program that encourages organizations to use green power as a way to reduce the environmental impacts associated with conventional electricity use. The Partnership has more than 1,700 Partner organizations voluntarily using billions of kilowatt-hours of green power annually.

To help the University of Illinois become a model of sustainability both in the community and for the world to emulate, the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment (iSEE) developed a tiered system for campus sustainability procedures.

The Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District (MTD), City of Champaign, City of Urbana, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are partnering to improve mobility in our communities core through a federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant. The $47.2M Multimodal Corridor Enhancement Project (MCORE) Project is unprecedented in our community’s history and will have a transformative impact.

The end of the spring semester sees thousands of students moving out of on-campus residence halls. A spring move out program, Dump & Run, has been implemented to collect good materials and divert them away from otherwise being discarded in the trash. The collected materials will be donated to local non-profits in Champaign-Urbana to promote the reuse and repurpose of these items. Every year, hundreds of volunteers are needed to assist with this program.

The University of Illinois Laboratory High School (Uni) received grant funding from Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation  (ICECF) through its

A project is planned for March to evaluate a new outdoor recycling station in comparison to existing bins with revised signage.  Housing has the station located inside the entrance of Ikenberry Commons.  For the project, that station will be placed outside along the North entrance, directly across from the existing bins.  After one week, waste audits will be conducted on both stations, the stations will then reversed, and the experiment will run for another week.

Japan House and the University of Illinois Arboretum request funding to provide bike racks on their grounds. There are currently no available bike racks in the 57-acre Arboretum and Japan House grounds. Japan House is the site of University classes and the Arboretum is frequently used as a resource for classes from units such as Landscape Architecture, and Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences. In addition, the Arboretum and the Japan House Gardens are a major recreational resource for students, faculty and staff and the general public.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has adopted a policy to discontinue the use of polystyrene products on campus because of its damaging effects on the environment and the potential health hazards.

This policy applies to all units on the Urbana campus.

This policy is implemented under the authority of the Executive Director of Facilities & Services.

The purchase of polystyrene products by University of Illinois departments and units is prohibited.