UIC Climate Commitments
UIC is a large and complex organization. Its Climate Commitment Action Plan (CCAP 2024) aims to simplify the university’s sustainability work in order to achieve its five climate commitments and become a:
- Carbon neutral university: UIC will achieve carbon neutrality with net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by reducing and offsetting emissions related to operations and travel by 2050.
- Zero waste university: UIC will achieve a 90% diversion rate of landfill-bound material through techniques such as source reduction, materials reuse, recycling and composting by 2050. (A 90% diversion rate is the generally accepted metric for zero waste.)
- Net zero water: UIC will reduce water consumption, maximize the proportion of non-potable water for campus water use and reduce the volume, rate and pollutant load of stormwater runoff by 2050.
- Biodiverse university: UIC will create a resilient campus landscape that supports a variety of life by 2050.
- Transformative scholarship university: UIC will create meaningful interdisciplinary and sustainability-focused learning and research opportunities for its students by 2050.
These five commitments may seem simple but implementing them within the complex organizational structure of a large public university will not be. They offer a framework to align the university’s standards, related plans, decisions, committees and funding. The commitments also establish a definition of success for UIC.
CCAP 2024 addresses each commitment in turn: five sections correspond to the climate commitments and provide specific recommendations about how to advance them. In some cases, the recommendations are specific and near-term while others are not. In all cases, UIC can make progress toward each commitment through actionable steps over the next five years, which can go by quickly.