Campus Greening: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois

In 2003, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Facilities & Services operation—an organization of 1,400 staff that supports the facility and service needs of the campus community—launched a program called BLUE Illinois. The purpose of BLUE (Building a Lasting University Environment) is to increase environmental awareness on campus and to educate faculty, students, and staff on best management and sustainable practices. BLUE encourages participants to use creativity and independent initiative within their own campus responsibilities to reduce waste, conserve energy and water, improve building efficiency, and protect the environment.

Each year, all the divisions in Facilities & Services (F&S) collaborate on setting fiscal year goals for the coming academic year. By pooling the diverse talents and interests of its staff, F&S strives to build and expand sustainable and best management practices on campus. Past goals have included:

• Improve environmental compliance of F&S activities.
• Conduct sustainability awareness training for F&S staff.
• Assist the campus administration in realigning the utility cost structure to encourage energy conservation at the departmental level.
• Train all F&S planners, project managers, lead inspectors, facility directors, and other individuals responsible for campus design and construction projects in LEED green building standards and their potential application on campus.
• Increase use of electric or hybrid vehicles.
• Conduct an environmental audit of F&S operations.
• Coordinate a hazardous waste cleanout day of F&S areas.
• Incorporate native species into the south campus landscape plan.

One of the fundamental BLUE program elements that helps bridge the gap between academic research and facility operations is the annual faculty/student sustainability projects. With assistance from the university’s Environmental Council, F&S solicits and funds proposals for joint projects that address campus operational issues in a sustainable manner. These projects provide hands-on learning opportunities for students, and research opportunities for faculty. Current projects include the installation and evaluation of the efficiency of a biomass furnace for comfort heating and the construction and evaluation of a rain garden as a stormwater management technique. The rain garden project has generated interactions among a variety of interested parties, including professors of landscape architecture and art design, F&S laborers, municipal public works departments, and community gardeners.

Facilities & Services has also convened a campus Environmental Stewardship Committee that is charged with developing a process of planning, implementing, reviewing, and improving the decisionmaking processes and actions by which the campus endeavors to meet its environmental stewardship and management goals. The university believes that developing an environmental management system for the campus will enable UIUC to better understand how its activities and facilities affect the environment. The primary tasks for the committee include:

1. Develop an Environmental Stewardship Communications Plan.
2. Begin development of a campus-wide Environmental Policy.
3. Begin outlining a campus stewardship implementation plan.

—Submitted by David B. Wilcoxen, Assistant Director, Division of Safety & Compliance, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign