Zero Waste Sustainability Working Advisory Team

Mission Statement / Committee Charge

The Zero Waste SWATeam (iCAP team) focuses on how to best maintain and improve the University’s food procurement, purchasing, waste management, and recycling programs in support of Illinois Climate Action Plan goals. The group works to implement a Zero Waste movement, which requires 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. The team addresses how to reduce greenhouse gases by saving energy through energy reduction 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 addresses the University’s progress on meeting the iCAP goals in regards to purchasing, waste, and recycling and looks to help further the progress of the iCAP’s targets of a Zero-Waste campus policy. They seek to address this by developing recommendations to, for example, 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). The team additionally reports annually on progress made toward Illinois Climate Action Plan objectives.

Roster

  • 4 faculty members
  • 4 staff
  • 4 students

Time Commitment

  • 1 hour meeting 1 or 2x/month
  • Research in preparation and follow-up for meetings

Term Limit

1 year

Chair Contacts

Faculty Co-chairs

Student Clerk

Affiliation

Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment (iSEE)