The October meeting of the UH Manoa Sustainability Council was held on October 17, 2018 at 3pm in HIG 210. Here’s a summary of the conversation:
* Manoa Dining Services is a part of Sodexo, a large company with 420,000 employees and approximately 32,000 facilities. Sodexo has committed to eliminating single use plastic takeout bags and plastic stirrers by 2019, reducing straw use and shifting more sustainable materials by 2019, and eliminating polystyrene foam service ware by 2025. This will eliminate over 245 million pieces of unnecessary single use items. For more information, contact Donna Ojiri (Donna.Ojiri@sodexo.com).
* The UH Manoa chapter of the Food Recovery Network was established in 2016. It organizes weekly recoveries of food from Gateway Cafe (2pm) and Campus Center (3pm) which are delivered to the Institute for Human Services. They are looking for volunteers; here is a link to sign up:
https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30e044ba8aa28a0fc1-frnvolunteer6
Ideas from the meeting: perhaps the National Resource Defense Council might have resources? Perhaps become a UHM Registered Independent Organization (RIO) and apply for funding? In related news, a UH System wide food insecurity survey is under way. Preliminary results indicate it may be as high as 30%. On Oct 26 in Kuy 106 Events Room, as part of open access week, there will a presentation highlighting the preliminary results from the student food insecurity study. Outputs will be recommendations for direct interventions and policy recommendations.
For more information on FRN, please contact Jenny Park (frnuhm@gmail.com).
* Arbor Day is coming up on Friday November 2, from 7am to 1pm. Come participate and you can walk away with a free tree! For more details, please see
http://manoa.hawaii.edu/landscaping/images/elements/ArborDay2018.pdf
The Campus Aboretum is also part of Make a difference day, on Saturday October 27, from 8am to 12 noon. Work will include weeding and planting. Garden tools and lunch will be provided. Please RSVP here:
https://goo.gl/forms/tcMTn0nX0Fo65rpH2
For more details on either of these events, please contact Roxanne Adams (adamsrox@hawaii.edu).
* The Women’s Campus Club sponsors grants of up to $4,000 for improving the UH environment and community. Applications are due November 2. For more details, please see:
https://www.hawaii.edu/wcc/grant_program.html
* The UHM Solar PV Project is about to break ground on the installation of 2,000 solar panels to cover the lower campus parking lot. This should generate around 2MW of power, which is projected to save from $2M to $8M over the system lifetime (actual savings will depend upon the future cost of energy). This is one component of a large process intended to produce an Energy Master Plan. There is potential for about 17MW of rooftop solar, enough to cover 30% of campus consumption. To get to net zero, we’ll need to build solar offsite and improve efficiency. For more details, contact Matt Lynch (mklynch@hawaii.edu)
* This year’s Hawaii Annual Code Challenge has sustainability as its theme. It includes three projects associated with UHM: Energy Consumption and Trends, Nitrogen and Carbon Footprint Data Aggregator, and Waste Audit Data Collection. If you’re a hacker, you’ll want to participate as the prizes and opportunities for reputation enhancement are truly incredible. The HACC starts this Saturday, October 20, at 9am at the East-West Center and lasts for three weeks. For more details, please see the website: