Blog |
Green Purchasing Team Photo Stream: Winter 2018
By Shannon Cavanaugh, Jamie Liu, Nick Caton, Whitney LaValle, Zach Ricciardulli, and Hayley Rundle. Edited by Melissa Ikeda.
The 2018 Sustainability Action Research Sustainable Purchasing Team has been investigating how UCLA can purchase products that are economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable. Here’s what they’ve been up to in the first few weeks of their project!
Week 2: Introductions
Introducing the 2018 Sustainable Purchasing team! We are so excited to get started with our project and have enjoyed meeting everyone in SAR so far.
Week 3: The Learning Curve
With our literature review on sustainable purchasing due in a day, it’s been a week of background research and learning for the members of the Green Purchasing team. In our team meeting this week, we prepared questions to ask our stakeholder in our first meeting next Tuesday.
Week 4: The Research Begins
The Sustainable Purchasing Team is starting to research Green Labels and non-toxic cleaning products. We were surprised to find that we owned some green cleaning products without realizing it, and wonder if they’re truly environmentally-friendly?
Week 5: Touring the Cogeneration Plant
On February 5th, the Sustainable Purchasing Team met with our stakeholder Rene Lydon at Facilities’ Cogeneration Plant, or as Rene likes to call it “the powerhouse of UCLA.” The co-gen plant generates 85% of UCLA’s electrical power and is about twice as efficient as an ordinary power plant through the close-loop cycle of a steam engine.
Week 6: Touring Facilities Management
The Green Purchasing Team of UCLA’s Sustainability Action Research toured the chemical storage of Facilities Management where all of the cleaning supplies used at UCLA are stored. The tour was super insightful and gave the Green Purchasing Team more ideas as how to implement greener cleaning on UCLA’s campus.
Week 7: Know where to dump hazardous waste!
While it is the goal of the team to help implement nontoxic cleaning practices across campus, in the meantime it is important to know what to do if you do have hazardous chemicals or objects around. This is a map to the UCLA S.A.F.E. collection center where you can drop off any potentially dangerous waste from garden chemicals to computer monitors.
Week 8: Team bonding with style
The Sustainable Purchasing team is at it again- this week exploring the trees around campus. This was part of some team bonding after Thursday’s meeting. Hopefully the buildings these trees surround will be cleaned with some sustainable chemicals in the coming years! Our aesthetic was robbed by Kendrick’s management.
Week 9: Strategic Sourcing & BruinBuy Trade Show
This week some members of the Sustainable Purchasing Team attended the Strategic Sourcing & BruinBuy Trade Show to learn more about purchasing at UCLA and the different vendors the school works with. The sanitary supply company Waxie was in attendance and provided us with some good information about their green cleaning practices.
Week 10: Midterm presentations!
The sustainable purchasing team hanging out after a successful presentation – featuring birds
Read more about the Green Purchasing Team’s mission on their Project Page. To check out other current and past SAR teams, visit the “Our Work” page, and don’t forget to give our Facebook page a “like” to keep up to date with what we’re up to!