Florida State University’s Sustainable Green Team recently won its third award from Florida TaxWatch for establishing two new recycling programs and FSU’s first Little Free Library.

The awards program at TaxWatch, a nonpartisan, nonprofit government watchdog and taxpayer research institute in Tallahassee, has recognized state employees and teams who increase productivity and promote innovation since 1989. This year, 10 organizations were recognized, including FSU’s Sustainable Green Team.

FSU’s Sustainable Green Team, comprised of six members from four FSU and Florida A&M University departments, is led by Mitch Gans, who manages the Research Computing Center Data Center in FSU’s Information Technology Services. Members are Amy Finley and Kev Sullivan of the Center for Information Management and Educational Services (CIMES), Daynah Blake and Mehmet Öztan of the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering’s RIDER Center, and Dina Vyortkina of the College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences.

The team came together about four years ago, as people began to return to their offices after the COVID-19 pandemic. Gans, who had remained in his office in the Sliger Building in Innovation Park during the pandemic, had begun working on the building’s green office certification with the CIMES and RIDER centers, but since the team’s expansion they have been able to take on a variety of waste management programs.

“We look for opportunities to solve big sustainability issues,” Gans said. “We’ve built several new recycling programs.”

The team began recycling plastic six-pack can rings from across campus and has continued to expand its efforts. They developed a materials recovery center to support their zero-waste data center, adopted the street outside their offices with the City of Tallahassee to pick up trash, started a recycling program for e-cigarette batteries, repurposed plastic waste from 3-D printers to create artistic structures and developed a Green Guide certificate program to encourage their allies across campus to become more sustainable.

“The FSU Sustainable Green Team does a lot of work with service providers and recyclable materials and will be looking for more ways to personally engage the community it serves in the future,” Gans said.

Recently, the team has connected with the community through events, including hosting tables at FSU-FAMU College of Engineering events and establishing FSU’s first Little Free Library at the Sliger Building.

The Little Free Library, located at 2035 E. Paul Dirac Dr., is always open and functions on an honor system where anyone can take or share a book. The book-sharing box aims to provide book access to all without the restriction of time, space or privilege, and reduces book and paper waste by providing a way to share used books with the community.

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A group of Florida State University employees has earned a 2023 TaxWatch Government Productivity Award for implementing a program that sees its office produce zero waste.  

The six-member team earned the recognition in large part for their work based in the Sliger Building, which houses FSU’s Data Center Services and the Resilient Infrastructure and Disaster Response (RIDER) Center.  

TaxWatch bestows its annual awards on state agencies, employees and workgroups that find ways to improve services, increase efficiencies and save Florida taxpayers millions of dollars each year. Ten groups across Florida earned awards this year.  

FSU’s group bills itself as “The Sustainable Green Team.” Members acknowledged by TaxWatch are Daynah Blake and Will Hill of the RIDER Center, Amy Finley and Kev Sullivan of the Center for Information Management and Educational Services, Dina Vyortkina of the College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences and team leader Mitch Gans of the Research Computing Center in FSU’s Information Technology Services.   

Gans said he is thrilled with the win — the team’s second consecutive such honor from TaxWatch — and that credit is shared across campus.   

“This began with us looking to recycle plastic, six-pack can rings about three years ago,” he said, noting the early response was encouraging. “We got excited and started telling our friends, our family and our colleagues across campus. Then we started looking for other problems we might be able to solve.” 

That effort has ballooned to include Styrofoam, toothbrushes, cardboard, plastics, even linoleum. The Sustainable Green Team counts numerous offices across FSU’s campus and in the community among its partners diverting waste from landfills.  

“People started bringing their waste to us to the point that not only did we become zero waste, but we dispose of more than we produce,” Gans said. “Nothing is going to the dumpster.”   

FSU Chief Information Officer Jonathan Fozard praised the team’s win and the collaborative effort that fueled it.   

“It’s inspiring how groups and individuals have come together,” he said. “The team started both small in size and in collections and now the Sliger Data Center is a zero-waste center. They’re leading their peers in the effort for FSU to go green.”   

The Sustainable Green Team next plans to diversify the materials it collects to include a campus-wide effort to recycle all printer toner materials.  

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