ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES COMMITTEE
June 7, 2004
EMU Board Room

ATTENDEES: Dorene Steggell, Joni Herbst, Ben Farrell, Christine Thompson, Anne Forrestel, Karyn Kaplan, J.R. Gaddis, Kay Coots, Steve Mital

Old Business
Follow up on the policies: Kay has the revisions for the Wood Products Purchasing, Recycled Paper, and the Comprehensive Environmental Policies. She will submit them as a package to Dan Williams and will ask for an approval timeline.

Suggested Items for Inclusion in the Year End Report:

* Oregon Daily Emerald Ads - A $1000 annual budget is funded by Dan William’s office. Anne asked if the effectiveness of these ads has been evaluated through market research. This could basically be accomplished through a survey of people’s awareness of the ads and their message recall. This might be a good project for marketing research students or the ESSLP class. Explore ways to assess the effectiveness should be done periodically. Karyn sets the ads up by September. The committee recommended that the ad plan should continue in the same way and then surveyed. Steve and Anne volunteered to work on designing a survey.

* The Sustainability Display – In his capacity as the quarter-time sustainability support person, Steve is working on updating the poster. He is redesigning it as a Power Point slide so that it may be printed in a large format and then laminated.

* Staffing Support for the EIC – Anne pointed out that it isn’t clear how to fix the problem and provides no solutions. Kay said that she and Steve have talked about possibly using some of the students to work administratively with departments to develop their own environmental policies. There is also a need to establish sustainability indicators or benchmarks. Dorene has found that there is no one she can turn to for background information so that the committee can make decisions or to help follow up on other committee issues. Steve said that the Good Company report provides some benchmarks used to begin to check our progress. Current data needs to be gathered and an automated system set up to update on a yearly basis.

Suggested wording for inclusion in the year-end report: The committee is encouraged by the quarter-time sustainability position and recommends that this position be continued. In addition staff support for EIC is also desired.

Goal: To gain approval of the Wood Products Purchasing, Recycled Paper, and the Comprehensive Environmental Policies and to be on the road to implementation.

It was decided to invite Dan Williams to the second meeting in the fall to discuss priorities. An agenda item for the first meeting will be to decide on questions, such as is sustainability a priority to UO and what does commitment to environmental responsibility mean. Dorene has agreed to chair the first meeting. Another agenda item is electing a new chairperson.