casel – UW-Green Bay Sustainability

Welcome Back to Eco U!

Welcome back to returning students and welcome to our incoming freshman and transfer students! Over the summer our sustainability team was working on updating our campus sustainability website. It’s now ‘gone live’ and you can check it out for yourselves – a one-stop shop for finding information on: sustainability efforts on campus; info on degrees, classes and faculty working in the field; events with a green tinge; and, much more! Check it out HERE.

Your first opportunity to learn more about being green is checking out the documentary “Disruption”, Sunday, Sept. 7, 7 p.m., University Union, Christie Theatre.

We look forward to a great academic year and working together across campus – students, faculty and staff – to keep our campus moving towards enhancing and improving our sustainability efforts.

CIT Goes Pro in Recycling

It’s not the holiday season just yet, but the Computing & Information Technology (CIT) elves were busy over the summer replacing 567 (yes, really!) total pieces of computer hardware – desktops, laptops and monitors. When you have purchased a computer for yourself, you may remember the copious amounts of packing materials. Cardboard boxes, Styrofoam around everything, plastic bags around cords, connectors and installation DVDs – it adds up to a lot of materials. Now magnify your one purchase by 567 and you’ll get an idea of the volume of ‘stuff’ CIT was generating with their unpacking.

Although the cardboard has been recycled for many years, this is the first year that the plastic bags, plastic film and Styrofoam went to a recycler instead of the landfill. With the new plastic film recycling program started in Spring 2014, and with help from the Environmental Management and Business Institute’s John Arendt to find a home for the hallway of Styrofoam, this year the vast majority of the packaging was recycled! “I never realized how much waste we produced from computer packaging until we put it all in one place,” said Ryan Ledvina, computer inventory and allocations manager.

ACH Foam of Fond du Lac made the trip up to campus to collect the Styrofoam and helped us keep the material out of the landfill. The recycling process at ACH Foam either grinds the material to be reused in new expanded polystyrene (EPS) materials or it is processed into a resin for making products such as garden furniture, coat hangers and crown molding.

Just in case you wondered where the replaced computers and monitors end up, they are either used to upgrade existing public and student workstations or made available to purchase through our on-campus surplus program. You can get an HP desktop with Windows 7 for $100 (2010 models) or $150 (2011 models), as well as 2011 21.5” iMacs ($400) and Gateway 19” widescreen monitors ($15). Visit the Surplus website to learn more and keep the recycling and reuse going strong!

Big shout out to the CIT staff for taking the initiative to collect and manage the packaging waste for recycling!

Welcome to Chancellor-designate Dr. Gary Miller!

On Monday, June 2, it was announced that Dr. Gary Miller would become the next Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay. Dr. Miller brings an ecologist’s mindset to the University which means a great ability to apply systems thinking to a complex organization. In initial interviews with the media, Dr. Miller has expressed that UWGB’s strong environmental and sustainability efforts were very attractive to him and his wife, Georgia, as they contemplated making the move to Green Bay. We look forward to working with Dr. Miller in revisioning and revitalizing an already strong environmental perspective to more deeply embed sustainability into the operating culture and the classroom instruction at UWGB.

Welcome Dr. and Mrs. Miller!

Earth Week is Here!

Check out these great opportunities to ‘green-up’ for Spring (and every season!)

Student organizations across campus are working hard to bring you important information, opportunities to participate and have some sustainable fun. Visit one of the booths during the week, get a ticket, enter your ticket to be eligible to win prizes (awarded at the end of the week). Check out these happenings and plan to attend a few to increase your Eco U knowledge!

Monday, April 21: Reducing Waste, Recycling and Composting, 11 a.m. – 2 p.m., Union booth by Phoenix Club

Tuesday, April 22: EARTH DAY! Myles Coyne and the Rusty Nickel Band, 11 a.m. – 2 p.m.; Local food lunch (FREE), 11 a.m. – 1 p.m. – Student Services Plaza or Phoenix Club (if raining), sponsored by PEAC

Wednesday, April 23: Conservation and Biodiversity – learn about invasive species and biodiversity. Union booth across from the Credit Union.

Wednesday, April 23: Ducks Unlimited student chapter is sponsoring a presentation by Steve Stoinski, US Fish and Wildlife Service Agent, 6-8 p.m. in the Christie Theater; Focus will be on conservation and federal law enforcement

Wednesday, April 23: Movie @ Mauthe – 7 p.m., “GMO – OMG”, sponsored by SLO

Thursday, April 24: H2O World – 11 a.m. – 2 p.m., Library booth near elevators

Friday, April 25: Energy Conservation and Divestment Issues, 11 a.m. – 2 p.m., booth by Garden Café

Saturday, April 26: Round River Alliance is spearheading a Campus Clean-up from 9 a.m. – noon. Meet at Communiversity Park to get your cleaning info.

Monday, April 28: Presentation and discussion featuring Torbjörn Lahti, international Eco-Municipality expert, 9 a.m – 10:30 a.m., Alumni Rooms A & B

And remember that you can make every day and week on the UWGB campus an ‘Earth’ day/week by recycling, reducing and reusing whenever you can!

Thanks to PEAC, Eco-Reps, SLO, Round River Alliance, SGA Environmental Affairs, DU UWGB Student Chapter for all their hard work pulling together these events!

Olympic athletes rally in defense of winter

By Russell McLendon

Source: Mother Nature Network

Posted Feb. 12, 2014

“Winter is getting weirder, and a coalition of Olympic athletes has seen enough. As Sochie’s Winter Olympics threaten to become the warmest in history, more than 100 Olympians have signed a petitions urging world leaders to take action against climate change.

Sochi is just the latest in a string of summery Winter Games, and the athletes say their sports are in danger unless an Olympic-style effort is launched to rein in greenhouse gas emissions. Although climate change can also promote wild winter weather like a recent spate of U.S. snowstorms, those unusual outbursts do little to offset the long global slog toward warmth, especially in winter-sports hotspots like Vancouver or Sochi.

‘Snow conditions are becoming much more inconsistent, weather patterns are more erratic, and what was once a topic for discussion is now reality and fact,’ U.S. cross-country skier Andrew Newell says in a statement released this week by the U.S.-based Protect Our Winters campaign. ‘Our climate is changing and we are losing are winters.’

At least 105 Olympians from 10 different countries have signed the petition so far, including 85 Americans. They want world leaders to carry on their Olympic spirit from Sochi to Paris, where a major U.N. climate summit will be held in 2015.

‘For the next two weeks, I’ll be in Sochi giving it my all on the ski course, just like thousand of Olympic athletes from around the world, putting politics, religion, all of our differences aside,’ Newell says. ‘Coming together for something that is bigger than one individual, or even one country. Next year in Paris, world leaders will also have that chance. Previous climate conferences have ended with nothing to show for it, but Paris needs to be different. We can’t risk inaction any longer and we’re asking our world leaders to come together in the spirit of something bigger than just our individual goals.’

Temperatures in Sochi have already topped 60 degrees Fahrenheit this week, creating slushy conditions that have frustrated many skiers and snowboarders. But the problem goes far beyond Sochi, as highlighted in a recent study led by University of Waterloo researcher Daniel Scott. Of the 19 cities that have previously hosted a Winter Olympics, as few as 10 may still be cold enough by 2050 to host again, according to the study.”

For the rest of the article and a nifty infographic on The Winter Olympics in a Warming World go HERE.

RecycleMania 2014 Starts Today (Feb. 3!)

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

For the fifth year, the UW-Green Bay community is taking part in ReycleMania (www.recyclemani acs.org), a national friendly competition and benchmarking tool for college and university recycling programs to promote waste reduction activities to their campus communities. Working with UWGB haulers – Waste Management (trash), Advanced Disposal (recycling), and SaniMax (pre-consumer organic waste) – data is collected on the volume of each be generated from our campus during each of the 8 weeks of the event (Feb. 2 – March 29). Using this data, our campus is ranked against others of the 500+ participants in various categories. We are participating in the Per Capita Classic, Waste Minimization and Grand Champion categories. During the week of March 3 – 7, look for special events to support our RecycleMania efforts! In the meantime, buy less, reuse more and recycle what you can! To learn our current status, check in here or at the UWGB Sustainability Facebook site for weekly updates starting the week of Feb. 17^th.

7 things to know about the new UN climate change report

By Ilissa Ocko

Published on October 1, 2013 on GreenBiz.com

Source URL: http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2013/10/01/7-things-know-about-new-un-climate-change-report

“On Friday, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest report – the fifth since the IPCC’s creation in 1988 – on the science of climate change.

These reports, published every five to seven years, are the work of several hundred scientists from around the world who summarize the current understanding of all aspects of climate change research. Thousands of other scientists review the summary, after which the IPCC publishes a comprehensive report, which synthesize findings from thousands of research studies.

Almost 200 countries are involved in the process. The IPCC also publishes reports that provide potential options for climate change mitigation and adaptation. The creators of the fourth IPCC report collectively were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

Here are seven key findings from the new IPCC report on the state of the science of climate change:

1. It is virtually certain that the planet has warmed since the mid-2oth century.

At the surface, each of the last three decades has been progressively warmer than the preceding decades since 1850. The rate of sea level rise has been higher than any average rate during the previous 2,000 years, and in the last two decades, ice sheets have been losing mass. Almost all glaciers are shrinking, and Arctic sea ice and Northern Hemisphere snow cover have decreased in extent.

2. Scientists are more confident than ever that humans are responsible.

With every report it has become clearer that the Earth is warming and that human activity is responsible. Scientists are now more than 95 percent certain that humas are the principle cause of climate change, mainly through the burning of fossil fuels. That’s up from more than 90 percent in 2007, 66 percent in 2001 and 50 percent in 1995.

3. Further warming is imminent, and short-term records do not reflect long-term climate trends.

Natural internal variability of the climate system, due to the El Nino effect, volcanic eruptions and other influences, makes it impossible to determine the overall warming trend of the planet through short-term measurements. For example, the rate of increase in surface warming over the past 15 years, from 1998 to 2012, appears slower because it begins with a record hot year due to a strong El Nino effect. On the other hand, the rates of sea level rise and glacial ice melt have accelerated during this time period. Over the long-term, continuing emissions of heat-trapping gases ineveitably will cause the plante’s surface temeratures to rise.

4. The surface could warm anywhere from 2.7 F to 7.2 F by 2100, relative to pre-1900 conditions.

The warming will be unevenly distributed, with more warming over land and even greater warming at the poles. Temperature increases such as these, even at the lower end, could increase the chances of extreme heat waves, drought and flooding due to heavy rains, and raised sea levels in areas where hundreds of millions of people reside.

5. The melting pace of land ice is accelerating in the Arctic and Antarctica, and sea levels could rise by more than 3 feet by 2100 if greenouse gas emissions are unchecked.

This could affect major cities, from New York to London to Shanghai. On longer timescales, sea levels could rise by nearly 10 feet over the next several hundred years, and even by more than 20 feet after a millennium if the Greenland ice sheet nearly disappears. However, if governments are able to curb emissions soon, sea levels could rise by slightly less than a foot by the end of the century. Sea level will not be uniform across the world, though, and more than two-thirds of coastlines may experience 20 percent more sea level rise than these globally averaged estimates.

6. The IPCC’s estimates of temperature and sea level rise are conservative.

Hundreds of scientists and representatives from nearly 200 countries have to agree on the precise wording of the IPCC reports, and therefore the reports inherently are conservative in their estimates. The new report is no exception.

7. Weather extremes are expected to change from human influence.

Scientists are virtually certain that there will be more hot and fewer cold days and seasons over most land areas, and it is very likely that heat waves will be more frequent and last longer. Extreme rainfall events over many mid-latitude countries and wet tropical regions are very likely to become more intense and more frequent by 2100. ”

To learn more abou the IPCC’s report visit: www.ipcc.ch

Carbon footprint from food waste bigger than most countries’

By SustainableBusiness.com

Published on GreenBiz.com on 9-16-2013

Food waste isn’t just a devastating misuse of natural resources, it’s also a huge part of the world’s carbon footprint, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Every year, the world throws out about 1.3 billion tons of food – a startling one-third of the food produced. And that creates a greenhouse gas footprint bigger than all countries, except fo China and the U.S.

How? Because of the immense amounts of energy, water and chemicals used for agriculture and food production. The food supply chain produces about 3.3 billion tons of carbon a year.

That means 30 percent oft he world’s farmland – about 3.5 billion acres – is wasted.

And not counting seafood, wasting all that food costs about $750 billion a year, about the GDP of Switzerland, says FAO.

“All 0f us – farmers and fishers; food processors and supermarkets; local and national governments; individual consumers – must make changes at every link of the human food chain to prevent food wastage from happening in the first place, and re-use or recycle it when we can’t,” said FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva. “We simply cannot allow one-third of all the food we produce to go to waste or be lost because of inappropriate practices, when 870 million go hungry every day.”

“Food wastage reduction would not only avoid pressure on scarce natural resources but also decrease the need to raise food production by 60 percent in order to meet the 2050 population demand,” writes FAO in its report ‘Food Wastage Footprint: Impacts on Natural Resources.’

The UN study is the first to examine the impacts of global food waste from an environmental perspective, looking specifically at consequences for the climate, water and land use, and biodiversity.

Where Waste Occurs

The majority of food waste (54 percent) happens during and after food harvesting, particularly while it’s handled and stored. The rest occurs during the processing, distribution and consumption stages.

In developed economies, such as the U.S., where up to 40 percent of all food is wasted, the issue is one of consumers buying too much and throwing away what they don’t need. Elsewhere, in emerging and developing nations, the waste comes from framing inefficiences and a lack of proper storage, reports FAO.

Asia (China, Japan, Korea) is a regional hot spot for vegetable waste and rice, the cultivation of which is extremely carbon-intensive. Meat waste is a big issue in Latin America, which accounts for 80 percent of the world’s meat waste. Fruit and vegetable waste is problematic in Asia, Latin America and Europe.

How to Solve the Problem

The highest priority is to reduce crop losses through better farming practices, says FAO. Also important are re-use and recycling strategies that make it easier to donate surplus food to those that need it, and to divert foods no fit for human consumption to livestock.

Beyond these strategies, FAO recommends by-product recycling, anaerobic digestion and composting to recover energy and nutrients. These processes also minimize the amount of methane created by food rotting in landfills.

“UNEP and FAO have identified food waste and loss as a major opportunity for economies everywhere to assist in transition towards a low carbon, resource efficient and inclusive Green Economy,” say Achim Steiner, executive director for the UN Environment Program (UNEP). “Today’s excellent report by FAO underline the multiple benefits that can be realized – in many cases through simple and thoughtful measures by, for example, households, retailers, restaurants, schools and businesses – that can contribute to environmental sustainability, economic improvements, food security and the realization of the UN Secretary General’s Zero Hunger Challenge.”

UNEP and FAO are founding partners of the Think Eat Save – Reduce Your Footprint campaign, launched this year to coordinate worldwide efforts to cut food waste.”

Source URL: http://www.greenbiz.com/news/2013/09/16/carbon-footprint-food-waste-bigger-most-countries

Will campus activism reach the C-suite?

Published on Greenbiz.com, 8/1/2013

By Georges Dyer

“Something’s brewing on college campuses that soon may affect corproate sustainability professionals in all industries.

“During the past year, a groundswell of action demanding that college and universtiy endowments sell their holdings in fossil fuel companies has brought environment, social and governance (ESG) issues to the fore. Driven in part by 350.org, the fossil fuel divestment movement has sprung up on more than 300 campuses and is spraeding to cities, faith organizations and beyond.

The latestes news: Sterling College – a small, private liberal arts college in Vermont – has completed its divestment from the fossil fuel industry. While Steriling is small, with only about 100 students and an endowment of approximately $1 million, it provides more evidence that divestment is pssible and relatively straightforward.

Do your homework

Common initial concerns about divestment include that it is costly, complicated and requires investors to sacrifice returns. To divest, Sterling College chose a fossil-free option that Trillium Asset Management has offered clients for over a decade. ‘Those who say divestment is not possible haven’t done thier homework,’ said Matt Patsky, CEO of Trillium.

Trillium’s fossil free option replaces screened companies with similar investment characteristics (e.g. similar beta and return on equity). The result is a fossil-free option that doesn’t sacrifice returns. Recent reports from Impax Asset Management, MSCI and Aperio Group support the claimt hat removing fossil fule investments from portfolios has a negligible impact.

Sterling is one of just six colleges to commit to divestment to date, along with Hampshire, Unity, Green Mountain, San Francisco State and College of the Atlantic. But many others are considering it.

Divestment highlights the moral hazard of our fossil fule based economy for institutions that understand the devestating implications of climate change, yet support fossil fuel production as shareholders. This is a particularly difficult challenge for college and university endowments, designed to benefit institutions and students over the long term, in perpetuity. How is it justifiable to risk the fundamental resilience of our society from climate change impacts in the name of potentially higher financial returns? (Particularly when the data suggest those higher returns are negligible, if they exist at all.)

A moral paradox

Divestment proponents recognize the fossil fuel companies are unlikely to stop mining and drilling because soem investors sold their shares – others will buy them. But the movement highlights this moral paradox. And even if no other schools divest, it has sparked conversations on campuses across the country about a range of other ESG investment strategies.

And this could have dramatic implications across all industries – not just the fossil fuel companies. Every company currently has some responsibility, in one way or another, for greenhouse gas emissions and a wide range of other sustainability challenges such as water use, toxic chemicals, and labor and human rights issues. But those that are proactively implementing strategies that help move society towards sustainability can avoid risks and seize opportunities for innovation, attracting top talent and enhancing shareholder value.

Increasingly, investors seek out companies creating sustainability solutions or driving best practices in social, environmental and governance realms.

‘More and more companies have been embracing the idea that sustainability principles are good for business and shareholders over time. WE’ve seen tremendous growth in this space.’ said Trillium’s Patsky. ‘The more they see interest from the investor, the more they will do about it.’

Companies that don’t make the cut from an ESG perspective risk limiting their pool of potential investors. Fewer buyers and more sellers can hurt stock performance, a key driver (for better or worse) of corporate decision-making. Investors influence corporate executives and directors.

There are many ways investor scrutiny on ESG issues can influence corporate sustainability practices, such as:

*ESG investors look to sustainability indices, such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices and MSCI’s ESG Indices, to benchmark and inform investment decision-making.

*As more asset managers incorporate ESG factors into their investment decision-making, and sell-side analysts do the same for their buy/sell ratings, companies increasingly will be judged on their sustainability performance.

*Asset managers (and their clients) that understand the benefits of ESG investing often engage directly with companies through various forms of shareholder advocacy, providing direct pressure to improve sustainability performance.

A recent survey from Oekom Research supports the idea that sustainability investing impacts corporate strategy: Nearly two-thirds of the companies said requests from sustainability rating agencies were a decisive factor in tackling sustainability issues. One-third said enquiries from sustainability analysts influence the overall strategy, and two-thirds said they influence their sustainability strategies.

Uncovering value

As college and university presidents, business officers and board investment committee members look more closely at these issues (thanks in large part to student pressure), they will realize that ESG factors are materials and can undercover hidden risk and value. By requiring traditional asset managers to step up their game on ESG factors, they will help drive more of the financial services industry to consider sustainability issues in all investments.

The shift to sustainability will be the result of the sum total of many companies, organizations, communities and individuals implementing bold, transformative strategies, through incremental step-wise actions. Institutional investors sit at a critical place to drive and accelerate this process. Imagine a virtuous cycle where Wall Street analysts, currently focused on short-term, quarterly earnings results, shift their attention to comprehensive ESG considerations. This will motivate corporate execs to improve sustainability performance to enhance their ratings and stock price, driving healthy competition and moving whole industries toward sustainability.

In recent months, a host of conferences, workshops, webinars and new initiatives have sprung up to help endowments understand these issues. This is just the beginning of what could prove to be the next big step in elevating sustainability as a core strategic issue for the C-Suite at companies in every industry.”

Source URL: http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2013/08/01/campus-activism-c-suite

The Weather Company Confronts Climate Change Denial Head On

By Tina Casey; Published July 15, 2013, TriplePundit.com

Recently, some of the top business journalists in the U.S. went on record asserting that climate change denial is a form of political posturing that is not worthy of discussion in serious reporting on economic issues. If that doesn’t lay the whole climate change denial thing to rest, then hopefully this will: The Weather Company has just endorsed the BICEP (Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy) Climate Declaration, which acknowledges the scientific consensus on climate change.

As the owner of The Weather Channel and related weather media platforms, The Weather Company already reaches a broad audience with reality-based information, so it’s in a good position to help bridge the political divide…or is it?

Communicating about climate science

Let’s start with the current state of affairs, which is the information gulf separating climate scientists and the lay public. Politics aside, a large part of the problem has to do with the nature of communication accurately about science in general. In many cases, it is impossible to reduce science into sound bites that can be absorbed during the course of daily life, especially in competition with the flood of other news in a media-saturated world.

Climate change poses an especially great communications challenge, because the hard evidence accumulates over long periods of time and cannot be seen with the naked eye, except in abstract form of a chart or graph.

The Weather Company and climate change

Public awareness is beginning to reach into new territory, even without the help of The Weather Company. In the past couple of years, more of the general population has had the misfortune to experience phenomena linked to climate change, namely, more frequent and severe storms, droughts, floods, and wildfires. That also includes people who live in areas that have not experienced extreme destruction in a generation or more, and now find their normally “safe” environment undergoing new threats.

In that regard, The Weather Company could help build these individual experiences into a tipping point. To see why, let’s go back a few months ago, when artists and researcher Nickolay Lamm used data from the non-profit organization Climate Central to create a series of arresting before -and-after images of East Coast landmarks affected by sea level rise. He had this to say about the project, which he called Sea Level Rise in Real Life.

“I’m surprised at the amount of people calling this a ‘liberal agenda.’ When I was making these illustrations, I based them off sea level rise maps from Climate Central, not someone’s wild imagination.”

Now Lamm has added a West Coast version to the project, and The Weather Company has picked up on it. In a July 12 article on weather.com, The Weather Channel posted Lamm’s West Cost images and video along with links to the East Coast version and to Climate Central.

The article also referenced NOAA and National Geographic, so consider that thrgough The Weather Company, reality-baseed information from Climate Central is now associated with some of the most trusted (and non-political) names in science information, all wrapped around a series of truly stunning, graphic images of what some of the most familiar icons in the U.S. landscape would look like under water.

For more of the article go <HERE>