Human Geography Presentation
Introduction
Sustainability at UF has been an ongoing goal since 2001 when the University adopted the US Green Building Council codes. In 2009 they made a detailed plan that set goals that would be implemented and assessed through an annual report every three years. While ambitious goals are important accountability through independent evaluation is essential to successful implementation and review.
Hypothesis
Sustainability implementation on the University of Florida campus has had varied success and mixed overall knowledge across the campus.
Flesh out methods
Focus on fleshing out background by avoiding temporal gap by keeping narrative
talk about why the indicators were chosen
Methods
- Consulting archival documents and quantitative data in archival documents from the University of Florida
- Survey a population of various students to assess their perception of sustainability on the campus
- Assess with the following criteria in mind: land cover, trash can and recycling centers, water fountain distribution, and sustainable building practices
Background
- In 2009 the University of Florida adopted the LEED building standards and required through three iterations to build all new buildings to LEED-Gold Certifications.
- In 2006 the University of Florida began implementing the Recylcing program through the office of sustainability at football home games with the intent to spread the program to regular activity on campus.
- In 2017 the Campus Master Plan was updated with amendments and future building sites.
Current Projects and Further Elaboration
- 77 of the listed projects are additions
- Of the current projects 11 being worked only two of them are demolition and construction programs, six of them involve upgrading or renovation to make space more efficient, and three are cosmetic or office moving.
- There are 11 projects in the design phase and 8 in planning phase.
- These projects are all in accordance with the Master plan and LEED building standards.
Pros and Cons of Construction
- Construction and renovations allow for preservation of historic spaces to be updated.
- It sounds counter intuitive, but as technology has improved and emissions from waste can be reduced upgrading technology allows for reduced emissions.
- Although beyond the scope of this study there are areas of preservation and building available at this link.
Trash Can and Recycling Centers
Recycling
Current knowledge of Recycling and Waste Management
- With current initiatives, UF achieves a waste recycling rate of nearly 40%, or over 6,000 tons of material annually.
- "I like to think we have things pretty well controlled and inventoried, as far as where the thousands of recycling bins and recycle stations are located – both inside and outside. That is, until the Big Belly invasion. The addition of those 70+ stations resulted in the fast & furious removal and relocation of probably 120 or more previous stations. I have made many corrections to my lists, but I’m not comfortable with the accuracy any more."
Water Fountain Distribution
Water
Fountains
- The amount of water fountains is unknown, however with the data provided by surveyors approximations can be made.
- There are at least 100 water bottle refill stations and the minimum of those survived is over 30,000 water bottles saved during the duration of the refill time.
- 11 people daily use of refill stations as daily use surveyed
- Less than 17 oz: 85 oz
- Around 34 oz: 340 oz
- Between 34oz and 17oz: 272-136 oz
- With those estimates applied to the University population there can be a maximum number of 184,512 gallons and minimum of 148,510 gallons used refilling water bottles a day from refill stations.
Access to Information
- All of the 17 people we surveyed were content with their access to water refill stations yet if they ran into a problem with them only 1 person knew who to contact.
- Net zero emissions were stated as a goal by 2015, yet on the sustainability timeline there is not mention or report updating the progression of this goal.
- There was supposed to be an annual report every three years since the 2009 CAP was implemented yet the three expected follow-ups have not been provided.
Access
to
Information
Infrastructure and Funding
- There have been drastic improvements, however there is still a requirement for interested parties to contact an email address.
- They may not always provide the answer that you would like to hear or have information to sufficiently answer your question.
- However, there is credit to be given to the allocation of staff to answer concerned parties' questions.
- "UF will track and publicly report annual boundary-scale upgrades with goal of increasing spatial and temporal resolution over time."
- The last report with accordance to this policy is from 2009 and you need to go through multiple pages to accumulate statistics on multiple topics.
Conclusion
- There is enforcement and implementation from the University of Florida Campus Management, however there is little reporting and accountability as promised initially.
Sources
- http://sustainable.ufl.edu/sustainability-at-uf/campus-initiatives/waste/
- http://sustainable.ufl.edu/sustainability-at-uf/history/
- http://www.facilities.ufl.edu/projects/prjlist.html
- UF Climate Action Plan 2009
- UF Campus Master Plan Amendments, May 2017