PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 27, No. 9, Nov. 6, 2008

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UI recycles 48.8 percent of campus waste, exceeding goal

By Sharita Forrest, Assistant Editor
217-244-1072; slforres@illinois.edu

Click photo to enlarge Photo by L. Brian Stauffer All bottled up Tim Hoss, coordinator of campus waste management, stands beside a stack of plastic containers that have been compressed into a bale in preparation for shipment to a recycling mill. During 2007, the campus Waste Transfer Station recycled 21 tons of plastic in addition to paper, aluminum, scrap metal and cardboard, saving more than $200,000 in landfill costs. By state mandate, the UI must recycle at least 40 percent of its waste.

Twenty-one tons of plastic, 41 tons of aluminum, 625 tons of scrap metal, 838 tons of cardboard and 1,236 tons of paper.

Those were the staggering amounts of waste materials recycled by Facilities and Services’ Waste Transfer Station last year. During 2007, the transfer station diverted 48.8 percent of the campus’s waste stream from landfills – exceeding the state-mandated goal of recycling at least 40 percent of its waste – and saved more than $200,000 in landfill costs.

The campus began its recycling program in 1989. “Since then, we have invested heavily in campuswide waste-management activities, including a $1.3 million material processing addition to the Waste Transfer Station,” said Tim Hoss, coordinator of campus waste management.

The UI was one of the first universities to create a state-of-the-art recycling-sorting facility when it opened the Material Recovery Facility in 1997. “The new addition is a huge factor in reducing the environmental footprint of the campus,” Hoss said.

Two trucks from the transfer station collect waste paper daily, and another truck collects cardboard twice daily from the thousands of recycling bins and 250 Dumpsters around campus. At the recovery facility, trucks dump trash onto the tipping floor, where bulky items such as large cardboard boxes, equipment and non-recyclable materials are removed. Workers then use a loader to push the trash piles onto a conveyor belt, which moves the trash into the main building where workers sort it, remove additional recyclable materials and drop them through chutes into storage bunkers. Six workers from the Developmental Services Center in Champaign help with the sorting.

The recyclable materials in the bins are then pushed onto another conveyor for baling. The transfer station, which generated about $500,000 in revenue during Fiscal Year 2008, is designed to be self-supporting. Compressing recyclable materials such as paper, cardboard, aluminum and plastic bottles into large bales yields a higher market price. The recyclables collected each day are baled the same day. Trailer loads – weighing a minimum of 42,000 pounds – are sold and shipped directly to mills.

Across campus, many other F&S units are reclaiming, reusing and recycling various resources. Although the Printing Department has offered clients the option of having their course packs printed on recycled paper for several years, this year Printing implemented a policy that recycled paper would be the standard material unless clients requested new paper.

“A department or professor can choose not to use recycled, but none have done so at this point,” said Duane Fitch, duplicating services manager. “We currently do around 200 packets per year. We use a little more than 4,000 pounds per year of recycled stock for course packs alone.”

The reason for implementing the policy was because “95 percent of course packs have the same specifications – white with black ink,” Fitch said. “Although quality is always critical, minor flaws in the stock such as spots or flecks are more acceptable since it is a third- or fourth-generation print.”

From January through June, 40 percent of the paper that the Printing Department used was recycled stock. Printing also recycles the equivalent of one Dumpster of paper each day, a Dumpster of cardboard per week and a truckload of wood pallets every 10-25 days. Additionally, the department reuses paper, envelope boxes and supply cartons for customer orders.

A not-so-obvious resource that F&S is recycling as well is the heated air from buildings’ exhaust. Energy recovery wheels position the air intake and exhaust equipment in close proximity so that the heat from the exhaust transfers to the incoming air, elevating its temperature and reducing the need to heat it.

Last year, the campus established a goal of achieving a silver rating from the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System on all construction or remodeling projects of $5 million or more. To achieve two of the 33 points required for a silver rating on the Ikenberry Dining Hall project under construction, crews are recycling 75 percent of all construction materials – such as paper, metal, cardboard and wood pallets – based on weight. Additionally, 77 percent of the materials from the demolition of the Illini Orange building previously on the site along Gregory Drive were recycled too.

The Mill Shop at F&S has integrated sustainable and recycled products into its stock for use in renovations and construction projects. The Mill Shop used Trex, a trademarked material composed of recycled plastic grocery bags, pallet wrap and waste wood, to build benches at Pennsylvania Avenue Residence Halls.

Nearly 100 percent of all fluorescent bulbs on campus are recycled by the Labor Electricians Shop, which has operated the program since 2000.

The Maintenance Electrical Repair Shop extracts copper wiring for recycling by a local facility.

Through the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corp.’s Call2Recycle program, F&S recycles nickel cadmium and lithium rechargeable batteries from power tools and cell phones, and now collects them over the Campus Stores’ and Receiving service counter at 1609 S. Oak St.

“Recycling saves material resources, reduces energy consumption and is an integral component to sustainability,” said Tom Abram, sustainability coordinator for F&S. “All areas of F&S have been working toward improving our recycling efforts to help our campus and community be as sustainable as possible. Individuals can do their part by reducing, reusing and recycling materials on campus and in their homes.”

Initiative brightens buildings and curbs energy usage

By Sharita Forrest, Assistant Editor
217-244-1072; slforres@illinois.edu

“Who turned on all the lights?” Bruce Barnham, interim head and a professor of natural resources and environmental sciences, said jokingly about recent lighting improvements at Turner Hall.

Turner Hall is one of four buildings where lighting was upgraded as part of the Lighting Retrofit Project, an ongoing initiative that is expected to curb energy usage while brightening up the lighting and whittling down the backlog of deferred maintenance projects in buildings around campus.

Crews from Facilities and Services Division are replacing fluorescent lamps and ballasts in about 80,000 light fixtures in 44 buildings across campus. T12 fluorescent lamps and magnetic ballasts are being replaced with high-performance T8 lamps and electronic ballasts, which generate the same amount of light but are 40 percent more energy efficient, do not flicker or hum and provide more natural color rendition.

“Other benefits of the T8 lamps are that they reduce the presence of potentially hazardous materials” such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and mercury that may be in the old lamps and ballasts, said Eva Sweeney, F&S engineering specialist. “They also reduce the amount of electromagnetic noise generated by the old ballasts,” which interfered with research in some units.

Overhead lighting consumes as much as 40-50 percent of a building’s electricity. “The chancellor’s Strategic Plan includes an aggressive energy reduction goal, and lighting will be an important step toward meeting it,” Sweeney said.

Since July, Turner Hall, the Psychology Building, the English Building and the National Soybean Research Center have been retrofitted with new lighting and work is in progress at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.

“I think a number of the ballasts weren’t working efficiently, so perhaps only two-thirds of the fixtures were fully functioning. (The retrofits) really brightened up the building considerably,” Barnham said. “It’s nice to see the university investing in some of these projects that need done. We’ve had a lot of these things that were installed when the buildings were built and have never been updated or modernized, and it’s good that we’re getting some progress made on these fronts. The biggest way that we’re going to save energy is to go through the buildings that we have and figure out how we can make them better.”

The total project budget is $2.8 million, and a $1.2 million grant from the nonprofit agency the Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation is funding work on about 30 of the 44 buildings on the target list of the largest energy users on campus.

Administration may obtain another $1.6 million, possibly from the Academic Facilities Maintenance Fund Assessment fee paid by students, to retrofit 10 other buildings on the list,  including Davenport Hall, Freer Hall and Bevier Hall. The proposed work would include replacing some deteriorating fixtures and installing occupancy sensors in addition to replacing T-12 lamps and ballasts with energy-efficient T-8s.  Projected annual energy savings for the 10 buildings would be about $260,000, based upon 12 hours’ usage daily, according to Doris Reeser, capital maintenance planning coordinator in F&S.

When completed in May 2009, the Lighting Retrofit Project is expected to save the campus more than $1 million annually in energy costs.

“The absolute most-efficient light is one that is switched off,” Sweeney said. “We can all have a huge impact on energy use by remembering to turn lights off when we leave, even if it is just over lunch or while at a meeting, but especially at the end of the day.”

F&S also is moving ahead with retro commissioning projects that will help buildings operate more efficiently by restoring building systems to optimal operating conditions with a focus on energy conservation, emission reduction, lower utility costs and comfort satisfaction. The projects include upgrades and renovations to heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems as well as other building systems.

During the past year, the retro commissioning team has completed upgrades in the ACES Library, Newmark Civil Engineering Building, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, the National Soybean Research Center and Turner Hall, with estimated savings to the university of more than $875,000 annually.

F&S plans to spend about two-thirds of its funding for deferred maintenance projects on energy conservation projects, including classroom renovations and heating, ventilation and air conditioning system replacements. F&S continues to investigate ways to reduce campus energy consumption and the carbon footprint, including the adoption of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards on large building projects, a wind turbine project and an awareness campaign.

Earlier this year, Chancellor Richard Herman established goals of reducing the energy consumption of existing buildings by 10 percent over the next three years and rolling back usage to 1990 standards within five years. In February, Herman pledged that the campus would achieve climate neutrality by joining more than 4,000 institutions in signing the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment. Additionally, Herman and Provost Linda Katehi approved the Energy Policy for the Urbana Campus in mid-2007, which aims to aggressively reduce energy consumption and costs, diminish greenhouse gas emissions and shift energy generation to renewable resources.

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