WEC Green Team

The UF Office of Sustainability recently developed a program called the Green Team, which was designed to help reduce the use of resources and costs of individual colleges and departments. Faculty and staff can serve as members or leaders.

The goal of the Green Team network is to develop strategies for campus-wide reduction of resource use and waste production in an effort to find sustainable solutions. A short definition of the term sustainability is “meeting contemporary needs without compromising the ability of future generations to satisfy their needs.” The focus of sustainability is primarily on three interdependent areas of concern: ecological preservation, economic viability, and social justice.

One of the quick facts on the Green Team site states that UF uses 400 megawatts of electricity or $40 million worth per year. Even though the financial cost of our electricity use doesn’t affect our department, the environmental cost of burning enough fossil fuels to create that amount of energy affects all of us in the form of pollution.

The immediate goal of the WEC Green Team is to determine what areas of our operations are the least sustainable and to develop solutions to reduce our impact in areas such as purchasing, electricity use, and waste management. It’s very important to our mission to have everyone anonymously fill out the Green Your Office surveys, which Elaine made copies of for everyone. We need you to please complete and turn these in to Elaine’s inbox by Friday so that we can organize our next Green Team meeting. The first meeting will take place immediately after the staff meeting if you are able to stay and would like to contribute.

Action Plan

We are currently having everyone in our department fill out our sustainability survey, so that we can target the needs of our department. Results of that survey will be posted soon.