Our current major projects include:
- The Battle of the Bulbs
- A competition between dormitories to see who can reduce their energy use by the highest percentage over the month of February. The month will begin with an event where we will provide food and talk about what will happen during the competition, and end with a celebration! Go to the Battle of the Bulbs Website to learn more.
- Brown Bag Lunch Series
- This series of brown bag lunches aims to introduce University professors to GCI, with the hope of engaging them in greening the campus. We invite professors who study environmental issues to discuss their work with GCI members over lunch. We aim for two lunches a quarter.
- Native Plants Garden Project
- In cooperation with the Religion and the Environment Initiative (REI), GCI currently maintains a native plants garden on the southwest corner of 58th and Woodlawn. GCI and REI propose approximately doubling the size of the current garden by adding a second plot on the same corner. With the help of professional landscapers from Greencorps Chicago and by involving Hyde Park community members, we hope to create a showcase garden that will serve as a catalyst for increasing the number of native plants used in campus landscaping as a whole. We also plan to educate the community about Illinois's native plants by installing educational signs and creating a self-guided tour of the University's landscaping.
Other ongoing projects include:
- Providing battery and printer cartridge recycling on campus
- Paper recycling and promoting better use of paper resources in computer labs
- Investigating renewable energy sources to provide the University's power, such as wind energy and methane-produing food digesters
- Establishing a working relationship with Facilities and other administrative bodies to pursue energy efficiency through audits and pushing dorm-dwellers to consume less energy, and overall to "green" the UofC
- Bringing organic food to the dining halls and raising awareness about food waste
- Making suggestions about how the University could build the new dorm and new buildings to have low environmental impact
- Working with the Chicago Department of the Environment to build relationships with the government of the city of Chicago, gain access to resources like grant money and expertise, and to help GCI refine our goals and plans to achieve these goals.
- Working with the Sustainability Council to create the University's first sustainability report that will assess where the University currently stands and that will make recommendations for progress