PPD - PPD News Recyclemania

PEDER WINKEL AND HIS SON PEDER WINKEL HONORED AT HSC

Peder Winkel and his son, Peder Winkel were both honored at the HSC Service Pen ceremony. MORE>>

LACY C RABON JR CHILLED WATER PLANT DEDICATION

Friends and family of Lacy Rabon gathered at Building 473 on the UF Campus on May 23rd to dedicate Heat Plant #2 as the Lacy C. Rabon, Jr. Chilled Water Plant. Dave O’Brien welcomed Lacy’s widow, Jenny Rabon, and their two daughters, Lynn Patton and Gayle Kozinski to share in the occasion. In his opening remarks, O’Brien gave a little history about Rabon. He started working at PPD in 1962 and spent 45 years working in and leading the Building Steam, HVAC, Chilled Water Plants, Steam Distribution and Controls & Alarms shops. MORE>>

XERISCAPING

Physical Plant's Grounds Department is constantly searching for ways to reduce the amount of water necessary to irrigate the thousands of plants on campus. To that end, Grounds employs a strategy called xeriscaping to help cut down on water usage. MORE>>

RECYCLEMANIA COMPETITION

The University of Florida, along with more than 400 other institutions of higher learning across the nation, is participating in the 2008 RecycleMania competition. RecycleMania is a yearly competition which began in 2001, and aims to provide “friendly competition among college and university recycling programs in the United States that provides the campus community with a fun, proactive activity in waste reduction”, according to their website. UF’s involvement in the competition is being spearheaded by the UF Office of Sustainability, in partnership with Physical Plant’s Solid Waste Management Office, the O’Connell Center, Gator Dining, Inter-Residence Hall Association, and other campus organizations.

PPD Solid Waste Management Coordinator Dale Morris explains, "This competition was brought to my attention last year by the Office of Sustainability. It's a great way to focus students and staff on recycling, and what they can do to help our efforts in that regard. The competition runs from January 29, 2008 to April 5, 2008 - each week we track our total recycled materials and enter them into the RecycleMania website, and at the end of the competition results are tallied and winners are announced."

Last year, its first year of participation in RecycleMania, UF took third place in the Gorilla Award category, which is awarded based on total gross weight of recycled materials per campus. This year, the University is entered in both the Gorilla Award category as well as the Per Capita Award category, which is awarded based on highest totals of recycled material divided by campus population.

"We obviously have a pretty good edge on a lot of other schools for the Gorilla Award, based on the size of our campus," said Morris. "The Per Capita Award will be a tougher event for us because of that same population size - we're hoping to get as much cooperation from students and staff as possible in order to make a good showing in this category."

UF Office of Sustainability Director Dedee DeLongpre said, "We've had an entire year to plan for the competition, and we have a lot of promotional and participatory events planned for RecycleMania. I think that awareness of our recycling efforts is definitely up across campus - Physical Plant has done a lot to increase access to recycling bins in campus buildings, and make it easier for students and staff to find the proper areas to sort their waste material."

The RecycleMania competition is an excellent way to bring people on board with the University of Florida's overall vision of sustainability, says DeLongpre. "I think it's just a great opportunity to not only save resources, but also to conserve energy by recycling," she explained. "With the current energy crunch we're experiencing, it makes good fiscal sense to try to conserve energy through reducing waste output. Our overall goal at the Office of Sustainability is to reduce waste - recycling is one part of that goal. This competition is a tool to help us get people on campus looking at recycling, and then through that at other ways they can help reduce waste and work towards a more sustainable campus at the University of Florida."

Morris added, "Recyclemania is a great opportunity to bring awareness to our recycling efforts on campus. I feel that the students and staff at the University of Florida are very competitive. This gives us another chance to show what we can accomplish compared to other universities, including many schools in the Southeastern Conference, around the state, and the nation. I'm looking forward to seeing what we can do against Georgia, the University of Miami, UCF, and even Ohio State University."

To learn more about RecycleMania, or to track UF's progress over the ten-week event, visit the official contest website at www.recyclemaniacs.org.

GREEN CLEANING AT BUILDING SERVICES

As part of Physical Plant's continuing commitment to the University of Florida and President Bernie Machen's vision of a sustainable campus, PPD Building Services has established environmentally-friendly policies for their cleaning products and services. The new initiative is called Green Cleaning, and it is beneficial both to the environment and to the customers which Building Services serves. MORE>>

LOWE GARDEN

The former site of Johnson Hall, which burned to the ground in 1987, is now home to a beautiful outdoor garden space named the Lowe Family Garden. The garden, located directly west of Dauer Hall, is the result of a PPD Architecture and Engineering project, and was funded by donations from its namesake, the Lowe family of Gainesville. MORE>>

PPD R.E.A.C.T. AWARD WINNERS

The R.E.A.C.T. award, created as part of PPD's Employee Recognition program, seeks to recognize employees who "Recognize an Event and Act to Correct in a Timely manner".