United States Penitentiary
Marion, Illinois
Intern: Jeff Rohrich
Southern Illinois, Carbondale
The United States Penitentiary (USP) in Marion is a former supermax prison
that was built in 1963 to replace the Alcatraz prison in San Francisco, which
was closed that same year. The facility is currently a medium security prison
housing male inmates. The facility also has an adjacent satellite prison camp
that houses minimum security male offenders.
The intern project focused on strategies for composting and recycling materials.
The intern also conducted energy audits to identify alternatives for improving
the lighting fixtures at the facility.
Results:
The USP Marion facility currently recycles cardboard and wood pallets. The
intern researched programs for recycling additional materials, in addition
to composting food waste. The goal was to lower the cost of trash service,
reduce the amount of waste going to landfill, and provide additional jobs for
the inmates. Inmates would be deployed to sort the trash and food waste from
the cafeteria. Food waste would eventually be composted on-site. By reducing
the number of rented dumpsters to one dumpster and reducing the number of pulls
from 13 to 7 pulls per month, the recycling and composting program has the
potential to save the prison facility over $32,000 annually.
The intern identified a number of lighting upgrades that could save the prison
over $7,800 a year, with a payback period of 11 months.
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