Dr. Evan DeLucia, Director of iSEE, sent Meredith Moore the following email:
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Good morning, Meredith
Dr. Evan DeLucia, Director of iSEE, sent Meredith Moore the following email:
--
Good morning, Meredith
Following the completion of the iWG assessment for ZW001 Student Sustainability Ambassador Program, the recommendation was transmitted to Evan DeLucia, Director of iSEE, on June 9, 2020.
This team was previously known as the Purchasing, Waste, and Recycling (PWR) SWATeam.
This team is focused on how to best maintain and improve the University’s food procurement, purchasing, waste management, and recycling programs. The group will work to implement a Zero Waste movement (like that described in the iCAP), which will require a “whole system” approach to resource management that implicates purchasing, maximizes recycling, minimizes waste, reduces consumption and ensures that products are made to be reused, repaired, or recycled back into the system. This system will reduce greenhouse gases by saving energy by reducing energy consumption associated with extracting, processing, and transporting raw materials and waste, and by reducing and eventually eliminating the need for landfills and incinerators.
This group will address the University’s progress on meeting the iCAP goals in regards to purchasing, waste, and recycling. It will look to help further the progress of the iCAP’s targets of a Zero-Waste campus policy. The group will approach this by working to make campus purchasing entities responsible for costs of the disposal of the products consumed and by avoiding the purchasing of environmentally irresponsible products and corporations (based on carbon and other environmental indicators).
Goals from the iCAP that this team will look to take to improve and take to the next level are:
This team focuses on the 2015 iCAP objectives for Chapter 6, as well as the food-related objective from Chapter 7, including:
6.2 Reduce municipal solid waste (MSW) going to landfills. This involves reducing nondurable goods purchases, effectively reusing materials, and recycling. In the latter category, campus will increase the diversion rate of MSW to 45% by FY20, 60% by FY25, and 80% by FY35, while also increasing the total diversion rate to 90% by FY20 and 95% by FY25. MSW sent to landfills should decline to 2,000 tons annually by 2035
6.3 Utilize landfills with methane capture
6.4 Appropriately staff Zero Waste efforts through the hiring of a full-time Zero Waste Coordinator.
7.4 Implement a project that examines the food service carbon footprint for Dining and other on campus food vendors, while increasing local food procurement to 40% by FY25