Exciting Changes at Nebraska Café
Last year Sodexo took the last step in eradicating Styrofoam from all of their restaurants and cafés on campus, as requested by diners, by changing to compostable clamshell to-go containers.
I’m excited to tell you that user feedback has also helped with the introduction of reusable plates for dining in the Nebraska Café. If you are taking your food to go, please continue to use the to-go containers; reusable plates are not to leave the Café.
Reusable plates are available at the salad bar and you can ask your café server for a reusable plate at all other food stations. In addition to improving your dining experience in the Nebraska Café, these plates will reduce waste and keep costs lower.
While visiting the Nebraska Café you may have also noticed a change to the tray return area. To help support the reusable plate program, ensure items left on the tray return are recycled, and prep items for composting (we aren’t composting yet, but we’ll let you know), we are asking users to help sort the materials they place on the tray return.
We are asking you to sort items into three categories:
- Top level: Landfill; soft plastics, coffee/soda cups, glass
- Middle level: Recyclables; plastics 1-7, plastic containers, aluminum or tin cans
- Bottom level: Reusable plates, fiber to-go containers, any food waste, napkins.
There are table tents in place to help you prep your items, and graphics next to the tray return to help when you get there—see the picture above.
Many of us like to compact our trash before we leave the table—you know, you stuff your saran wrap and your banana peel into your yogurt cup—but resist that urge! Those three items will got on the three different levels at the tray return.
The café sorters behind the tray return are really busy (did you know the Nebraska Café serves over 6,000 meals a week??) and they don’t have time to take everything apart to sort it. By sorting items on the tray return, you are helping to decrease your waste and the waste on campus.
Thank you for your help with this new initiative. If you have questions about where to place a particular item, please post a comment here or email LiveGreen@unmc.edu If you have other comments, please submit them via the comment cards in the café, near the condiment station.
A Happier, Healthier Holiday Season
Americans continue to say they would prefer to reduce the focus on gifts during the holidays, with a recent survey showing 69% would agree to forgo gifts entirely so they could save money and spend more time with loved ones. Even if that’s the desire, the reality is that consumption is still a focus, and this causes waste to increase by 25% (1 million tons/week more to landfills) between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. Not really surprising when you start thinking about all the shopping, eating, and traveling.
Seemingly little actions add up and there are lots of things you can do to reduce your waste and have a happier, healthier holiday season:
- Reduce the focus on gifts and concentrate on the things that really matter, especially your sanity.
- If you exchange gifts, consider buying experiences, like museum/zoo membership, or make donations instead of buying stuff. If you do buy gifts, look for locally made items.
- Consolidate your shopping trips to save gas, take reusable bags, consolidate online shopping to save on shipping, and look for products that contain recycled content and responsibly sourced materials.
- Wrap gifts in reused materials. If every American household wrapped 3 gifts in reused materials (brown paper, maps, Sunday comics, cloth bags, cereal boxes) enough paper would be saved to cover 45,000 football fields! For everything else, use recycled content paper and reusable gift-bags, boxes, and bows.
- Recycle old lights to help local groups and replace them with new, efficient, LED lights, which use 70% less
- Hosting? Buy food in bulk to reduce packaging waste, but menu plan to reduce food waste, and serve with reusable plates/cups/utensils/napkins.
- Make it easy for guests to recycle, and recycle everything you can’t reuse.
- Consider sending E-cards; saving trees, your time, and money. Recycle or reuse any cards you receive for decoration, future gift tags, or craft projects.
- If batteries are needed, buy rechargeable—they’ll save you money and trips to the store in the long run. Recycle single use batteries.
- Check your thermostat: more people and more cooking means the temp can be lowered. Every 2 degrees lower saves $100 a year, saves the equivalent carbon emissions as driving a car 3,000 miles, and people get to be comfortable in their (reused) ugly Christmas sweaters.
- Reduce junk mail by contacting Catalog Choice to remove your name from marketers’ databases.
- Instead of a cut tree, buy a live tree to decorate that can be planted in your yard once the holiday season is over. Dig the hole now, before the ground freezes.
- If you buy a cut tree, leave it in your yard for birds during the winter and then compost, or take it to the city’s recycling sites.
Wish-cycling
November 15th is America Recycles Day, a nationally recognized day dedicated to promoting recycling, and buying recycled products.
America Recycles Day is easy to celebrate because it takes no preparation. If you’re finished using a product and it is recyclable, then put it in the correct recycling bin—that’s all there is to it!
Not sure what to recycle on campus? Watch this short video to find out, or visit our webpage for on-campus information. Check out the Wasteline site for recycling information in and around Omaha.
It’s more important than ever Recycle Right! Make sure you recycle items in the correct containers. This reduces contamination, which could send the entire load to the landfill, while ensuring that everything in the bin can be recycled.
Don’t be a “wish-cycler”! Wish-cycling is the common, but damaging process of intentionally placing questionable items into a recycling bin, in the hopes it will be recycled. Those of us that care the most about recycling are some of the worst offenders. We desperately want to believe that the item can be recycled or that they will find a way to do so, but it actually creates more problems: sorting machines get clogged or broken, which takes time/money to fix, it’s more time consuming for hand-sorters, and it creates more waste! It also costs us (wastes) an average of $250,000/year.
Recycling is important and has huge impact on our planet and our economy. In order to complete the loop and make sure your recycling effort has value, buy products made of recycled content. When you purchase a product take a look at the label. If it contains the 3-arrow triangle (often referred to as the recycle symbol) it is recyclable. If that triangle is inside in a circle, that product is made from recycled content. The package should tell you percentage of that item that was made from recycled materials, and if the materials are “post-consumer content.”
Post-consumer means the material came from the end-user and that material would have otherwise ended up in the landfill, like cans, newspaper, or plastic bottles. Pre-consumer/industrial content is still recycled material, but was produced during the production of another product, e.g. wood chips, sawdust, and glass or metal shavings.
Recycled content product diverts materials from the landfill while protecting new or virgin resources, so make sure what you are buying has the highest percentage possible of recycled content.
Doing some “fall cleaning” and have items that aren’t meant for the recycling bin? Reusing is always better than recycling! Donate clothing, warm weather gear, and toiletries to people in need, and local charities will take other household items.
Cenergistic Energy Specialists Have Arrived
Left to Right: Jon Hilton, Art Dominguez, Blaine Richter, John Khong, not pictured Nicole Mattson
Last month, University of Nebraska President Hank Bounds, Ph.D. announced a five-year partnership with Cenergistic, aimed at finding energy savings across the campuses through technology- and behavior-based strategies that will help maximize NU’s use of its facilities and equipment. Nebraska Medicine agreed to the same five-year partnership so the entire Med Center campus can be optimized.
“Campuses have done an excellent job of enhancing sustainability over the years, but we can always do more to be better stewards of our environmental resources,” Dr. Bounds said. “We’re excited to have Cenergistic on board to help us think through how we can be an even more sustainable and more innovative university.”
A team of Cenergistic engineers and conservation experts are on-site now, working with facilities to gather information about space and energy use in the university’s buildings. That includes, for example, building temperatures, use of lights, space utilization and other information.
Cenergistic, will recommend guidelines aimed at improving energy conservation and cutting costs. Guidelines will be vetted by campus leadership and will take into account, for example, the unique energy and space needs of research facilities, the hospital, and others factors.
In addition to the engineers and conservation experts, there will be Omaha-based energy specialists in specific spaces—offices, auditoriums, hallways, conference rooms to see how those spaces are performing, verifying data, and sometimes speaking with the occupants to learn how the space is used. They will also be in buildings at night, as unoccupied spaces should be using much less energy than they do during the day.
The energy specialists are Blaine Richter, Nicole Mattson, and John Khong and will be led by Jon Hilton and Art Dominguez, all seen in picture above.
Cenergisitc will also deploy data-logging devices in many spaces, to not only verify what the system says is going on, but also to look at what is happening on one end of the room compared to the other. These devices will only monitor temperature, humidity, and light levels. Please do not touch, move, or interfere with the data-loggers.
Buildings will be notified prior to any data-logger installation. The first buildings to be surveyed will be some annex buildings and then some of the education buildings.
All Cenergistic personnel have undergone campus safety and privacy training, background checks, required screening, and will have med center issued photo ID badges. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact LiveGreen@unmc.edu
A Happier, Healthier Holiday Season
Americans continue to say they would prefer to reduce the focus on gifts during the holidays, with a recent survey showing 69% would agree to forgo gifts entirely so they could save money and spend more time with loved ones. Even if that’s the desire, the reality is that consumption is still a focus, and this causes waste to increase by 25% (1 million tons/week more to landfills) between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. Not really surprising when you start thinking about all the shopping, eating, and traveling.
Seemingly little actions add up and there are lots of things you can do to reduce your waste and have a happier, healthier holiday season:
- Reduce the focus on gifts and concentrate on the things that really matter, especially your sanity.
- If you exchange gifts, consider buying experiences, like museum/zoo membership, or make donations instead of buying stuff. If you do buy gifts, look for locally made items.
- Consolidate your shopping trips to save gas, take reusable bags, consolidate online shopping to save on shipping, and look for products that contain recycled content and responsibly sourced materials.
- Wrap gifts in reused materials. If every American household wrapped 3 gifts in reused materials (brown paper, maps, Sunday comics, cloth bags, cereal boxes) enough paper would be saved to cover 45,000 football fields! For everything else, use recycled content paper and reusable gift-bags, boxes, and bows.
- Recycle old lights to help local groups and replace them with new, efficient, LED lights, which use 70% less
- Hosting? Buy food in bulk to reduce packaging waste, but menu plan to reduce food waste, and serve with reusable plates/cups/utensils/napkins.
- Make it easy for guests to recycle, and recycle everything you can’t reuse.
- Consider sending E-cards; saving trees, your time, and money. Recycle or reuse any cards you receive for decoration, future gift tags, or craft projects.
- If batteries are needed, buy rechargeable—they’ll save you money and trips to the store in the long run. Recycle single use batteries.
- Check your thermostat: more people and more cooking means the temp can be lowered. Every 2 degrees lower saves $100 a year, saves the equivalent carbon emissions as driving a car 3,000 miles, and people get to be comfortable in their (reused) ugly Christmas sweaters.
- Reduce junk mail by contacting Catalog Choice to remove your name from marketers’ databases.
- Instead of a cut tree, buy a live tree to decorate that can be planted in your yard once the holiday season is over. Dig the hole now, before the ground freezes.
- If you buy a cut tree, leave it in your yard for birds during the winter and then compost, or take it to the city’s recycling sites.
Fall EcoChallenge Results
As October comes to an end, so does the fall EcoChallenge. In case you missed it, the EcoChallenge is hosted by the North West Earth Institute, and is a 21 day challenge encouraging participants to learn about sustainability topic areas that interest them, while taking measurable action, having fun, and encouraging others. Individuals earn points, can win prizes, and get to see how these three weeks of learning and/or actions add up to make meaningful change—in our community and around the world.
We were especially excited this fall, as the category of health was added to go along with waste, food, transportation, energy, community, nature, water, simplicity, and you could create your own. As you hopefully know, health and sustainability are directly connected. Not only is having clean air, water, and food integral to your health, doing things like eating more vegetables, using active transportation, and reducing waste are better for you and the environment. This is how sustainability helps us to meet our mission.
Participants selected a limited number of daily activities, including but not limited to eating meals without any form of technology, exercising, refusing single use plastics, or eating meatless meals. They could also select a number of one-time activities including getting an annual physical, watching informational videos on topics, telling others, or buying carbon credits.
This fall the UNMC/Nebraska Medicine team decided to challenge the UNO team. I am happy to report that we won! We put up 15,332 points and placed 40th out of the 842 teams participating. UNO had 13,519 points and finished in 47th place. Had we combined teams, as we did in the spring, we would have been in 16th place!
Speaking of combined effect, our team had an impressive impact. With all the options I can’t list them all, but we saved 1,475 gallons of water, got an additional 855 minutes of sleep, spent 6,220 minutes exercising, ate 227 extra servings of fruits and vegetables, and prevented 223 plastic bottles, 157 straws, and 183 disposable cups from going to the landfill.
Great job team!!
If you missed the EcoChallenge, they’ll be another in the spring. In the meantime, you can have your own impact—pick a sustainability related topic you’d like to know more about or improve/change and challenge yourself (or your friends/family??) to learn more about the topic or make the specific change on a daily basis.
Why We Recycle
Many people think of recycling when it comes to being sustainable—and it is an easy, first step. Goods are turned back into products so new resources don’t have to be used while simultaneously preventing sending that same material to the landfill. Reducing and reusing are better than recycling, but there are times when that’s not possible, so recycling is then the way to go.
Did you know the EPA estimates 75% of what Americans throw away is recyclable? Unfortunately the national average of materials diverted from the landfill is only 34% and Omaha is a shockingly low 11%. The Med Center has improved to 27% but we still have some work to do to get to the 90% (zero waste goal.
Have you ever wondered what impact your recycling has? It seems like such a simple action and a small item, can it really have a big impact? Yes! Your aluminum can is one of the 6,700 cans used every second and 200 billion used every year. It takes more energy to mine and produce aluminum than any other metal, yet we landfill enough to provide the auto industry with all the material it needs to build a year’s worth of new cars, which is valued at $1 Billion. However, recycling uses only 5% of the energy needed to create the same can from mined aluminum and they can be back on the shelf in 6 weeks.
Plastic is no better. Americans throw away 25 million bottles every hour. New production uses crude oil and other chemicals leading to pollution which has a negative impact on health including reproductive issues, obesity, cancer, lung diseases and endocrine issues. Researchers are now seeing long term effects in children when they are exposed to pollution. In short, recycling helps reduces harmful pollutants which are bad for our health. To meet our mission of leading the world in creating a healthy future for all, we must reduce, reuse, and recycle.
Changes in the international recycling market means that it is more important than ever to Recycle Right. Please make sure all materials are placed into the correct bin and liquids/food have been removed. If you have questions on what can be recycled, see our website or watch this short video
Other items can be recycled at the Med Center; including aerosol cans, furniture, electronics and toner cartridges. For more information see the LiveGreen Recycling page.
TravelSmart receives Regional Service Award from MAPA
Last week, TravelSmart was honored by the Metropolitan Area Planning Agency (MAPA) with the Regional Service Award.
MAPA is a regional Council of Governments serving Eastern Nebraska and Western Iowa. MAPA brings local and regional officials together with citizens like you to connect, plan and thrive.
We were honored to receive the Regional Service Award, given to “an organization whose efforts have had an extraordinarily positive influence on the MAPA five-county region.”
Specifically, UNMC and Nebraska Medicine were honored for “its work to create an innovative and sustainable solution to transportation challenges in the Omaha Metro area” and for “standing out as a regional leader.”
TravelSmart is currently reducing a parking garage worth of cars (~700) coming to campus each day, which reduces emissions, promotes healthier lifestyles, saves participants money, and reduces traffic congestion which further reduces emissions, road use (repair), and leading to safer and healthier environment for the campus and Greater Omaha region.
Representing the med center at the event were (from left to right in the picture) Mike McGlade (transportation and parking committee chair, senior associate dean of administration COM), Hannah
Stanzel (clinical services associate for MMI, former parking assistant who helped implement TravelSmart), Melanie Stewart (sustainability manager for Nebraska Medicine and UNMC), and Tina Spencer (specialist, former parking manager who helped implement TravelSmart). Not pictured, Daniel Lawse, Verdis principle who helped design and implement TravelSmart.
TravelSmart was also selected by the Heartland 2050 Initiative to be the featured example in their recent “Closing the Gap” which demonstrated how complete active transportation programs can help both businesses and participants (see above) but can also help attract and retain talent in the workforce.
Are you already a TravelSmartie? That’s great! Don’t forget to contact travelsmart@unmc.edu if you need anything.
Considering TravelSmart? It’s a great way to save money, reduce emissions/pollutants, and most of the time, increase your physical activity. Want to save a little money (holidays are right around the corner) it’s all FREE and a great way to reduce your costs. You don’t have to give up your parking permit and you don’t have to use it for every commute. Check out the TravelSmart website for more details or contact travelsmart@unmc.edu We are happy to answer any questions or concerns, help you find a bus route or park and ride location, and we can even assist in finding a carpool partner.
Recycle Right
By Melanie Stewart
UNMC and Nebraska Medicine have a goal to divert 90% of our waste from the landfill by 2030. One of the easiest actions for all individuals to take is recycling an item once it can no longer be used.
We currently recycle 26% of our waste; this is an improvement on our baseline, but we still have a ways to go. Unfortunately for us, China has decided to be more selective on the waste/recycling they take from other countries. While very little recycling from Omaha ends up there, this change has created a domino effect that does impact us. The change that is the most important to note is contamination. If recycling streams contain too much contamination the entire load will be sent to the landfill. Contamination can occur in 2 ways; having trash/recyclables in the wrong stream (pop can in the paper container, or potato chip bag in the plastic container) or trash mixed in with recycling. This is most common is food/drink still in the item.
Do I need to wash my recyclables before placing in a bin? In short, no. Beverage containers need to have the liquids emptied, but they don’t need to be rinsed/washed. Food needs to be removed and soiled items (greasy pizza box, etc.) should be placed in the trash. Containers don’t need to be washed, just get the bulk of the food/sauce out. E.g. eat all the yogurt, no need to clean, or use your napkin to dump the lasagna you didn’t eat into the trash, no reason to wash it.
We’ve made good progress, but have work to do.
Remember the basics:
- Paper: Put mixed paper in the blue bins. Virtually all paper products on campus can be recycled: copy paper, envelopes (including plastic windows), scratch paper, glossy paper, construction paper, clean food packaging, newspaper, receipts, post-its, notebook paper.
- Cardboard: All Corrugated cardboard (boxes used for shipping) and standard cardboard (sometimes referred to as paperboard: facial tissue/cereal/frozen meal boxes) can be recycled on campus. Please break all boxes down flat and place them between your paper recycling bin and the wall or at the designated location for your building.
- Metal: Metal should be placed in the green bins, along with plastics. These materials include aluminum (pop) and tin (soup) cans, but small metal shipping containers and other metals can be recycled too.
- Plastic: Plastic is recycled in the same container as metal. All plastics that go in the green bins need to be rigid. Any items that holds shape on its own can be recycled, i.e. bottles, frozen meal trays, plastic dinnerware, yogurt cups, lids, straws, can all be recycled. Soft plastics like plastic bags, plastic wrap, bubble wrap, cellophane cannot.
Other items can be recycled at the Med Center; including aerosol cans, furniture, electronics and toner cartridges. For more information see the LiveGreen Recycling page.
Thank you for helping us get to our Zero Waste goal!
Fall EcoChallenge
October is campus sustainability month and there is a new EcoChallenge, though similar in style to the one this spring. This EcoChallenge has new categories (including health!) to choose from and new actions within all the categories, so there is something for everyone, including family members and kids.
You may recall the Drawdown EcoChallenge that we participated in April during earth month; we combined the Med Center team with the team from UNO and we rocked it! Based on our points we were 40th in the nation, out of 767 teams!
We participate because the EcoChallenge is designed to be fun but also to take measurable action on topics that you care about. While you earn points, you also get to see how these three weeks of learning and/or actions add up to make meaningful change—in our community and around the world.
Join our team! It’s a fun way to learn about a variety of sustainability topics both locally and worldwide and more fully understand the impact of choices we make, but also available solutions. If you have friends or family members that want to join our team, we’d loved to have them as well.
New this fall: we challenged the UNO team to a friendly competition for bragging rights! And did I mention the health category?
Ready to join our team?
You can sign up for free, track/share progress online and earn points. Points help us to compete against UNO and earn you prizes. You can select as many actions as you want, ranging from replacing a bulb with a LED, to watching a video, using mass transit, or pledging to spend a specific amount of time learning about a topic. You can pick whatever interests you as there are numerous options to pick from in 9 different categories:
- Health
- Waste
- Food
- Transportation
- Energy
- Community
- Nature
- Water
- Simplicity
- or Create your own
So what are you waiting for? Join our team today to turn intention into action; all while having fun and winning prizes—oh, and having a positive impact on the planet and humanity.
