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Wednesday, January 30, 2013

First Annual Sustainability Report

At UC Santa Cruz we recognize that passion for sustainability is our own natural resource that is renewed and nourished year after year. Featuring updates for each topic area and identifying ways that we can continue to improve, the First Annual Sustainability Report reflects the progress our campus has made in the past year toward our goals.

The report not only includes metrics and stories of success from our campus's sustainability efforts, it also includes information about the many campus groups and organizations who have made these efforts possible. Events, student fee measures, and other aspects of campus sustainability that influence and support campus sustainability are also described.

You can view this exciting and colorful document by clicking here.

UCSC Biomedical Building Officially LEED Gold Certified

The UC Santa Cruz Biomedical Building is now officially LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold certified. The building was designed and constructed with a target of achieving silver certification, but it exceeded this goal and is now the third LEED Gold certified building on the UCSC campus. The other two Gold certified buildings are the Porter College House A and the Cowell Student Health Center.


"The Biomedical Sciences Facility is one of several science buildings on the UC Santa Cruz campus that together create a biomedical 'research cluster' organized by research interest rather than department. The primary purpose of the laboratory is to provide open and flexible laboratory spaces for researchers in molecular and cell biology, development biology, chemistry and biochemistry, environmental toxicology, and biomolecular engineering."


The building's mechanical and electrical designs emphasize sustainability and energy efficiency, with attributes such as daylighting, lighting controls, active chilled beams in the laboratories, reduced air change rates, and low-pressure-drop design of air handling systems. In addition, building information modeling was used throughout design and construction." (Source: International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories)

Stay tuned for more information as we will be covering this story in more depth in our March newsletter.

For a complete list of LEED certified buildings on the UCSC campus and other UC campuses, please click here.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Dropping Your Drip and Water Conservation

Think about this for a minute: Each of us has a direct, visible, tangible impact on water use in our everyday lives. Water is something we need, touch, see, feel, drink, and use every single day, and each of us has opportunities multiple times throughout the day to conserve this precious resource. 

Here are some reminders about how to conserve water. Read a more complete list on the Drop Your Own Drip campaign website.

Kitchen:

  • No dishwasher? No problem! Instead of leaving your tap running while washing each dish, plug up both sinks and fill them with water instead – one soapy, one for rinsing.
  • Same goes for rinsing veggies as with dishes: fill up a bowl of water to wash your veggies instead of wasting a bunch of it when you keep the tap running.
  • Use fewer dishes so you don’t have to wash as many.

Bathroom:

  • Turn off the tap when brushing teeth, shaving, washing your face and hands. 
  • Take fewer showers. Going to be home all day on the weekend? Maybe you don't really need a shower that day. Be conscious of when and why you're showering.
  • Or take shorter showers. Reduce your shower time by 30 seconds each day for a week, or aim to take no longer than 3 minute showers.
  • Place a large rock or a milk container full of sand in the tank of your toilet. Placing objects in your toilet’s tank displaces water, thus reducing the amount used per flush.
Laundry: 

  • When hauling down your stuff to the laundry room, make sure it’s worth it. Wash your clothes only when you have a full load
  • Reducing the frequency of your loads of laundry will save some serious H2O. You can wear those jeans one more time.
  • Wash your clothes in cold water. Simple as pushing a button.

For students who live in the apartments on campus, get ready for a super fun, sustainability and water-saving competition starting February 4! Drop Your Own Drip, a campaign of the Student Environmental Center, is a student-led competition in which campus apartment residents receive simulated monthly water statements, which educate all on-campus apartment residents about their monthly water-use while encouraging conservation.



In addition to reducing overall water use, each resident is challenged to use no more than the target-level of daily water-use of 20 gallons per person. The competition will reward the college residents from one of the ten main apartment complexes on campus who successfully reduce water-use per capita the greatest percentage.

Find out more on the website or by contacting Sarah Angulo.

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Strengthening the Roots Convergence and Community Seed Summit: February 22-24

Join us for a weekend-long student organized event that brings together students, community members, seed savers, gardeners, farmers, and food justice activists to share skills and resources while building face to face relationships with one another.

The summit will:

  1. Connect participant stakeholders with community based initiatives to help build a resilient and bioregional food system.
  2. Ground participants with the story of seeds and how they are at the crux of cultivating a sustainable agricultural system.
  3. Be interactive and fun, thereby acknowledging all participants as teachers and learners. 
Events include:

  • Speaker Panel on Saturday, February 23 from 7-10 PM - including Dr. Vandana Shiva 
  • Seed and Culture Exchange - Saturday, February 23 from 5-6:45 PM 
  • A series of interactive workshops in seed saving/stewardship, creating local seed library and cooperative networks, creating and managing student-gardens/farms, building beginner farmer programs, and developing fair trade systems. 
  • Open spaces for dialogue allowing for participants to actively facilitate discussions and take action on meaningful topics.

Click here to register for the Summit. For more information and general inquiries please email the organizers.

University Forum for Sustainability Education: February 13

The goal of the University Forum for Sustainable Education  is to create a space to discuss creative ways to incorporate sustainability education into UCSC. We will ask participants to discuss how students, staff and faculty can work together to integrate multiple fields of study into sustainability education through incorporating current curricular and co-curricular programs as well as peer to peer education models. The University Forum will include an interactive discussion led by various student sustainability leaders, a speaker panel consisting of involved faculty and staff and free locally sourced vegetarian dinner. The ideas generated for this forum will be incorporated into the student created 2013-2014 Blueprint for a Sustainable Campus, which is compiled by the Student Environmental Center after the annual Earth Summit event.

This event is being hosted by Education for Sustainable Living Program and will take place in Kresge Town Hall on February 13, from 5:30-8:30 PM. Please RSVP here.

Bridging Sustainability and Interculturality Fair: February 1

Hosted by Friends of Community Agroecology Network (FOCAN), the Bridging Sustainability and Interculturality Fair is a space for students to critically and creatively think about the intersections of ideas on sustainability, interculturality, and food. Through guest speaker Ciara Wirth, performances, Do It Yourself stations, and tabling, you'll be able to learn about these terms and the importance of them.


This event will take place in the College 9/10 multi-purpose room (next to the dining hall) on February 1, 2013 from 12-3 PM. To find out more, please contact Alberto.

Washing the fleet without contaminating the Bay

Physical Plant, Be Smart About Safety, Fleet Services, & Grounds Services has finished construction on a pressure washing system supplied by a closed-loop water recycling system. This system does not drain out to the sewer or the Bay. Rather, water is cycled through the system using microbes to eat and digest contaminants, such as oil, and the final water that comes out of the pressurized hose is used to wash engines, vehicle exteriors, and other oil-soaked vehicle components.


With the completion of this system, we are now able to locate and eliminate oil leaks that find their way onto UCSC and Santa Cruz County-wide roads and keep the vehicle fleet clean using less water in the process.


Sustainable practices on campus road projects

Last summer, UCSC's Physical Plant worked on a number of road projects, including the McLaughlin Road Rehabilitation Project. During this particular project, construction crews used a technique called Full Depth Reclamation (FDR), which grinds existing asphalt, base rock, and native soil in place, mixes it with 3% dry concrete, and then compacts it into a sub-base. A new 3" asphalt overlay is then placed atop. By using this technique, Physical Plant reduced the amount of truck trips on and off campus as well as reduced the amount of new material needed to construct the road. What an awesome way to integrate sustainability into an important construction project!

Water Conservation Education

PowerSave Green Campus in partnership with the Central Waste Reduction Team has created a water conservation display that is rotating through the campus dining halls. It will be in Cowell/Stevenson Dining Hall February 4-10 and in the College 8/Oakes Dining Hall February 18-24. The display includes a three-dimensional map of where UCSC gets its water, stacks of gallon jugs that illustrate water use in old versus new toilets, a cookbook detailing dining hall dishwashing water use, and posters with tips for conserving this precious resource. Students can make pledges to make more sustainable decisions, and participants will be entered in a raffle. The goal of this display is to inform students about how precious water is, inspire them to make changes in their own lives, and tell them what they can do to conserve water. Be looking out for the display in your local dining hall and make sure to stop and take a look when you see it! For more information, please contact Delia Bense-Kang.

Friday, January 25, 2013

Crown/Merrill Dining take diet challenge


Beginning February 1, more than 25 students and staff members associated with the Crown/Merrill Dining Hall will be going vegan and/or participating in the Engine2Diet Plant Strong Challenge for 28 days. This is a drastic change of diet for most of the participants, giving up meat or dairy for a month. Many are doing it for health reasons, to lose some weight or because they have come to the conclusion that eating meat and cows in particular, just does not feel like the right or humane thing to do. Some are just doing it because they are curious and want to join their fellow coworkers and friends that are going vegan. Congratulations on making a sustainable committment, Crown/Merrill Dining Hall staff and students! Find out more about the Engine2Diet here, and contact Loni for more information about the Crown/Merrill participation in the challenge.

Take the UCSC Cycling Survey

The Santa Cruz Climate Action Plan is looking to increase the safety and quality of bike infrastructure on the westside of Santa Cruz. The Bike Transit Planning Team, a team of students from the IDEASS (Impact Designs: Engineering and Sustainability through Student Service), is working with the City of Santa Cruz to gather community input on potential infrastructure improvements to bike safety. To have your input included, fill out this 6 question survey. To learn more, contact Austin Seller.

UCSC Cap and Trade, a Student Perspective

by Ariel Wexler, second year Environmental Studies major

A couple weekends ago, Lacey Raak, Director of Sustainability, led a workshop at this year's Sustainability Inter Organizational Retreat called "GHG Emission and Cap and Trade at UCSC." Her presentation provided students with a summary of greenhouse gases and how they are being regulated in California and at UC Santa Cruz.

I found the presentation interesting, and it prompted me to learn more. As a member of the Education and Outreach Team in the Sustainability Office, I thought this information might be of interest to our newsletter readers. Here's what I've come to learn.

There are three different scopes of greenhouse gases, the first being sources that are owned or controlled by a business, meaning direct gases. On our campus this includes our cogeneration plant, which creates both energy and heat. California's Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32) commits California to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, the cap is set for 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide.

After looking at projections on graphs of UCSC's scope 1, our gas emissions are supposed to go over this cap by 2014. This is largely due to a new cogeneration plant that the University has purchased in order to replace the old one which will soon be out of commission. If we go over these projections, the University will have to pay until they go below the threshold for a three year compliance period which could cost the University over $2 million. That's pretty shocking information.

A University committee will decide sometime by the end of the academic year what to do to prevent going over our cap. One of the options the University is considering is to explore both short term and long term biogas purchases, but no decisions have been made. Biogas, although more expensive then other types of gas, is less harmful to the environment.

Students are encouraged to get involved and share their thoughts with key decision makers.

For more questions or concerns about this feel free to contact Camille Carrillo at clcarril@ucsc.edu, the Climate Action CSI and student representative on the Chancellor's Executive Committee.

What are your thoughts on this? Share in the comments!

Thursday, January 24, 2013

February 2013: Internships, Employment, and Volunteering


It's cold outside. It's beginning to rain. Soon you'll start seeing your breath all hours of the day and the body heat of people cramming onto the bus with you will become welcome. You know what you need? The warm fuzzy feeling that you get from working on something you're really passionate about. It's more heart-warming and energizing than all those cups of coffee you've been downing to get back onto something vaguely resembling a school schedule.

There are tons of internship, employment and volunteering opportunities right now that can give you that boost.  Here are just a few:

Volunteer for the 12th annual Earth Summit, Friday, March 8th
This is an all-day event that brings people from the sustainability community all around campus together with the general public. This event will include everything from workshops to live music, not to mention tons of delicious, fresh, local food. Volunteers are needed throughout the day, but especially for set-up and clean up. If you are interested in the event you can check out the blog post here, or if you already know you want to volunteer please contact Melissa for more information.

Volunteer at the Santa Cruz Natural History Museum
Interested in gardening, habitat restoration, tidepooling, maintaining exhibits and helping at events for the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History? Volunteer today! Find out more and fill out an application here or email Matt

Apply for the Provost's Sustainability Internship Program (P.S.I.)
The Provost's Sustainability Internship Program (formerly the Campus Sustainability Internship Program, C.S.I.) is currently looking for Staff Mentors who are interested in having a student intern for the 2013-2014 school year and Student Interns who are looking to run a unique sustainability project and get highly applicable professional training. The Provost’s Sustainability Internship Program is a combination course and internship that pairs students with staff across campus departments to complete a year-long sustainability related project. It is a great opportunity for staff to recruit talented students to work with them for the entire academic year, at a low-cost rate. The Sustainability Office pays for half the cost of the intern and provides them with professional development training and project support throughout the duration of the internship.
Applications for Mentors will be due February 20th, and Student applications are due April 4th Please contact Nikki if interested.

Make Haste to Zero Waste! Events coming to a dining hall near you!
Do you love food and hate waste? Come join UCSC Dining as we move towards a Zero Waste campus and learn more about food waste. We are looking for interested students to help participate in Waste Awareness Events in the dining halls on campus. In return for participation, you will be rewarded with a FREE MEAL PASS! For more information, please contact Dining Sustainability Intern Victoria.

Environmental Education for the Next Generation Seeking Instructors
EENG provides free, youth-led environmental education programs to 1st and 2nd grade classrooms in public schools throughout California to help cultivate the next generation of passionate caretakers of the earth. For more information, please visit their website.

Find or Upload Projects to Sustainability Project Clearinghouse
Interested in getting involved in a campus sustainability project, but don't know how? Are you looking for partners for your current project? Have you completed a project that you would like others to learn from? Visit the Sustainability Project Clearinghouse, a centralized database of UCSC sustainability projects, today! You can view published projects or upload your own projects and ideas. For training on how to upload a project, please contact Shauna.

You're already starting to feel a little warmer, huh?

Cage Free Eggs in Dining Halls



UCSC Dining is pleased to announce that they have now transitioned to serving 100% cage free eggs across all dining hall and retail units. Working with the Food Systems Working Group (FSWG), students have long requested this switch, and due to a favorable system wide-strategic pricing policy, with Wilcox Farms, dining completed this implementation at the end of Fall quarter. To find out more about what "cage free" means, click here. For questions or comments, please email Candy Berlin.

February 2013: Sustainablity Director Hired

Each month, our newsletter features a person or group on campus that is working toward a more sustainable world. This month's profile features the new UC Santa Cruz Sustainability Director, Lacey Raak.

Lacey Raak (Photo: Carolyn Lagattuta)

We asked Lacey what she thinks about sustainability and to share her thoughts on what it means to be the Sustainability Director at UC Santa Cruz.

Name: Lacey Raak

Title: Sustainability Director

Education: B.A. in Global Studies from University of Minnesota; M.A. in International Environmental Policy from Monterey Institute of International Studies

Favorite food: Fruit (especially berries)

Favorite Green Tips: Go for a walk...it helps you slow down, it doesn't produce any waste or emissions, it connects you to your surroundings and it helps you become aware of the environment around you, whether that is a forest, a residential street, an industrial park or a beach front.

What does "sustainability" mean to you? Wow, that can be answered a lot of ways, but in the most simple sense it means considering the impact of everything I do. What I purchase, how I travel, the food I eat. Everything that touches my life impacts or is impacted by something else and it is my responsibility and my joy to consider those impacts.

How does sustainability relate to your role at UCSC? I live and breath sustainability at UCSC, it is my job. Some of the exciting projects I have recently been involved with include the Green Revolving Loan Fund, working on Cap and Trade impacts to UCSC and supporting the work of other staff and students working on sustainability throughout campus.

How do you practice sustainability in your daily life? I think about the impact my life has on the world around me and I always strive to stay true to my values and live intentionally.

Have you had a favorite sustainability moment at UCSC? Every time I walk through the office and hear students and staff working on projects and programs in their sustainability niche I get really jazzed.  I also love that in a meeting at UCSC, I am with people who ask how we can do more to reach our sustainability goals rather than question why sustainability is important.


City on a Hill Press recently profiled Lacey in their Campus Voice column, as well. Click to here to read the article and learn more about Lacey's work and thoughts about campus sustainability.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Inter-Organizational Sustainability Retreat 2013 a Success!

The first weekend of the quarter, eighty students and staff convened for the 3rd Annual Sustainability Inter-Organizational retreat for a weekend of community and leadership development, workshops and a whole lot of fun! The theme for the weekend was Community, and by the end of the weekend, the community of sustainability students and staff had certainly been strengthened through a jam-packed couple of days of activities.

Read about the sustainable ways in which we got all those people to the retreat center here!

The weekend began with an opening ceremony led by Tim Galarneau, Research Educator for the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems. He had us thinking about food memories, getting our senses fully engaged with fruits and vegetables, and performing spoken word mad libs about avocados and apples. It was a fun and engaging way to open the weekend.

Cammie Yarros and Andrew Plebanek of the Student Environmental Center talk about food memories during Friday's opening ceremony.

On Saturday morning, student leaders from many of the sustainability organizations at the retreat facilitated team building activities with the guidance and support of Miranda Allen-Brower, Director of the UCSC Experiential Leadership Program. Teams of students and staff participated in team building games, experiencing what it's like to work together to achieve goals and problem solve. At the end of the morning's team building games, each team performed a skit that represented what they had learned through the various stations.

On Saturday morning, participants walked around and said hi to as many other participants as possible in a game called "Speed Greet."

After lunch, participants attended workshops throughout the retreat center. Topics included workflow management, best practices for tabling, energy auditing, campus funding bodies, a waste relay, social media, cap and trade, a LEED tour of the camp, and non-violent communication. The workshops provided students and some staff an opportunity to share skills and knowledge with other students and in some cases generate discussion about best practices.

Crystal Owings and Victoria Salas who work with the Food Systems Working Group and UCSC Dining led a workshop on best practices for tabling.

Following the second round of workshops, participants spent some time with their independent organizations, visioning and planning for the coming quarter. For some groups, this was a chance to reconnect with the mission and values of their organization. Knowing one's unique role in a community is important in building connections with others. Other groups used this time for planning for the quarter or having discussions as an organization.

Casey Wing and other students who work on waste reduction through Green Office Certification and Zero Waste in the Sustainability Office led a discussion about how to reduce waste and sort recycling properly.

In the evening after dinner, students and staff participated in a world cafe on the topic of Organization Cultural Awareness and Best Practices, sharing different processes and best practices from each organization. A conversation blossomed from this activity that led to ideas for how to find more ways to come together inter-organizationally more often, and students seemed invigorated with a drive for more collaboration.

Saturday's activities closed with an hour-long campfire and open mic night, during which students sang, played music, spoke poetry, hula-hooped, and more. It was a fun way to end a long day of activities and getting to know one another.

Sunday morning, organizations had more independent time for planning, and then the eighty participants gathered on the steps of the lodge for a group photo. The retreat officially was brought to a close with a closing ceremony in which each participant taped a piece of paper on his or her back and others wrote to them about inspiring moments or memories from the weekend related to that individual. It was a creative and personal way to share gratitude and feel part of a community after a full weekend of community building.

During the closing ceremony, students and staff wrote gratitude and appreciation on the backs of other participants. Wearing the orange scarf is recently hired UCSC Sustainability Director Lacey Raak. 

Thank you to everyone who participated in the planning of this fantastic retreat, and thank you to all of the attendees! You made the retreat what it was, and our office looks forward to collaborating with you and continuing to foster the relationships that began or were nourished during the weekend of time together. Let's all have a productive, sustainable, and fun quarter!

Click here to view the Facebook photo album from the weekend!

February 2013: Innovative Approaches to Sustainability at Other Campuses

Here are a few selections of the innovative approaches to sustainability taking place on other college campuses. Each of these examples was chosen because they represent ideas that UCSC could potentially implement in some form, or in some cases, already has begun to. If you see something here that you want to make a reality at UCSC, contact the Sustainability Office and we will help you direct your ideas toward fruition!

University of Guelph Earns Fair Trade Status
University of Guelph in Ontario has received Fair Trade Campus status from Fairtrade Canada, becoming the first fair-trade campus in the province. In other words, all coffee served at non-franchise locations on campus is fair trade-certified coffee. The certification is a result of the university’s commitment to purchase fair-trade products that uphold social and environmental standards to protect food producers and the environment.

Oklahoma State University to Develop Campus "Eco-Village"
The university has begun developing a housing option designed to encourage its residents to be more socially and ecologically aware. The newly-conceived "eco-village" will incorporate ideas about sustainable living in a socially integrated community by integrating sustainable building design, on-site food gardening, and small-scale animal farming into these new living spaces on their Stillwater, OK campus.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Creates Sustainability Degree
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (or, RPI) in Troy, NY has created a new major in sustainability studies to prepare students for jobs in the construction, science and engineering fields with a heavy focus on clean technology. The new Science and Technology Studies - Sustainability Studies B.S. program weaves together techniques and insights from the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering to address environmental problems.

University of Vermont Hosts First Bike Summit
University of Vermont (UVM) in Burlington, VT recently held its first annual Bike Summit in an effort to raise awareness about bike visibility on campus. The participants of the summit discussed ideas about how to improve bicycle life on campus, like adding more bike racks around campus, increasing the number of bike lanes downtown, and a creating an on-campus shop to help with bike repairs.

February 2013: Classes, Training, & Community

Join the Kresge Natural Foods Co-op
The Kresge Community Natural Foods Co-op is a non-profit student-run food store located on the south side of Kresge College. It has been a Kresge College tradition for over twenty years, supporting small farmers, the UCSC Farm Project, and the Kresge Organic Garden. While anyone can buy food at the Food Co-op, members receive a discount. The Co-op operates as a collective and a variety of membership options are available. Special pricing is available on bulk orders. Come in for groceries, lunch, snacks, hot coffee, tea, or just to spend time with your friends. Hours: Weekdays 9 AM - 6 PM To contact the Food Co-op, call 426-1506, or attend the bi-weekly meetings every other Sunday at 11 am in the Student Lounge.

Enroll in ESLP for Spring quarter
We invite you to enroll in the Education for Sustainable Living Program’s (ESLP) class for Spring quarter! The Spring class incorporates both 2 and 5 unit student led sections and a Monday Night lecture series. Some section topics include: restoration and ecopsychology, land and habitat conservation, sustainable urban design, green business, vegan cooking, and other topics in the Blueprint for a Sustainable Campus. Sign up through College 8 for CLEI 61 or 161 for Spring Quarter (2-unit and 5 unit options available). 

Garden Market Carts
The garden market cart is a stand created through the collaboration of four different campus gardens (College Eight, Kresge, PICA, and Stevenson) that aims to give out homegrown campus goodies and to educate students and staff about our school's gardens. This quarter, the cart will be at S&E Library on Friday, January 25th, from 10-11:30AM and at McHenry Library on Friday, February 15th from 10-11:30AM to pass out free veggie and herb bundles. Those interested in getting more involved should contact Lidia Tropeano.

Garden Work Days
Want to feel the soil between your hands and help cultivate some growth and community? Garden work days for the campus gardens can be found on our online calendar here.

Heard about other sustainability related classes, trainings, or community opportunities around Santa Cruz or the campus? Post in the comments or send us an email

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

UC Santa Cruz Talks Trash: Zero Waste Goals & Achievements

Watch this 15 minute video about UCSC campus zero waste goals and how we are working toward reducing our waste through recycling, composting, education and outreach, and more!

CHP News WasteFree 120312 from Student Cable Television on Vimeo.

Earth Summit 2013: Branch Out! Fostering Inclusive Solutions: March 8

Hosted by the Student Environmental Center, this all-day event will celebrate sustainability on campus and in our community. Throughout the day there will be fresh local foods, informative and fun workshops, tabling, keynote speakers, spoken word, live music and entertainment, and much more! Oh, and did we mention it's all FREE?

Don't miss this amazing opportunity to get more involved with the sustainability movement on campus and to network and meet awesome people!

Earth Summit 2013 will take place Friday, March 8 in the College 9/10 Multipurpose Room from 11 AM - 5 PM.

Are you interested in leading a workshop? Contact Workshop Subcommittee Coordinators Amy Chau or Marlayna Kirby for more information.

For tabling, contact Volunteer/Tabling Coordinators Anna Fairehrenreich or Melissa Hanson for more information. All tables will be educational and opportunity-based. Organizers are also still looking for volunteers who would like to help make this wonderful event possible. They especially need help setting up the day of from 9:30-11 AM and cleaning up that evening from 5-7 PM.

Questions, concerns, or in search of any other information? Contact Katie Lippus, the Earth Summit and Blueprint Coordinator.

Global Village Cafe Receives Green Business Certification

Congratulations! Global Village Café located at the McHenry Library is the first contracted food vendor on campus to receive their Green Business Certification from the City of Santa Cruz. This intensive program focuses on pollution prevention, water and energy conservation, solid waste and recycling, equipment and facility upgrades as well as staff training are part of this comprehensive City of Santa Cruz Green Business Program.

With the assistance from campus dining (which currently have all 13 locations certified) this 6 month implementation process was achieved in early December. 


Victoria Salas, Adam Hoffman, and Clint Jeffries in the Global Village Cafe at McHenry Library

“I felt it was a major priority to become a certified Green Business. Given the transitional environmental/sustainability issues our generation is facing, I believe our certification will help lead the way for other independent food vendors to demonstrate their commitment to support local agriculture, food waste awareness, and energy efficiency. Going through this process of being certified has revealed several minor measures that all of us can take to make a major difference in the food industry. Thanks to all who helped along the way!" said Adam Hoffman, General Manager at Global Village Cafe. 

“Collaborating with campus vendors to achieve certification is one of the dining department goals from the current 3 year campus sustainability plan and Adam was enthusiastic and motivated from the first contact,” stated Clint Jeffries, Green Business Manager for UC Santa Cruz Dining. 

Assisting Adam in the detailed process was the Chancellor's Undergraduate Intern for Dining, Victoria Salas.  If you want to make change happen on this campus and get involved in UCSC as more than just a student, you should apply for the Chancellor's Undergraduate Internship Program, which is currently accepting submissions until February 13. Find out more about the campus-wide internship program here.

To learn more about the Green Business Certification of Global Village Cafe, please contact Candy Berlin.

Monday, January 7, 2013

Upcoming CASFS/Farm Events

Matthew Sutton teaches a fruit tree class, part of the Friends of the Farm & Garden workshop series

January 13, 10 am – 12 noon: Fruit Tree Q&A
ProBuild Garden Center, Santa Cruz            Orin Martin, Matthew Sutton
Bring your fruit tree questions to this free Q&A session with fruit tree experts from the UCSC Farm & Garden and Orchard Keepers. Learn about varieties that perform well on the Central Coast, along with fruit tree care tips. Friends of the Farm & Garden members receive a 10% discount on plant purchases.

January 19, 10 am – noon: Fruit Tree Q&A,
Sierra Azul, 2660 East Lake Ave, Watsonville                         Matthew Sutton
Bring your fruit tree questions to this free Q&A session with Orchard Keepers founder and owner Matthew Sutton. Learn about varieties that perform well on the Central Coast, along with fruit tree care tips. Friends of the Farm & Garden members receive a 10% discount on plant purchases.

January 26, 11 am – 1 pm Fruit Tree Q&A
The Garden Company, 2218 Mission Street, Santa Cruz      Orin Martin
Bring your fruit tree questions to this free Q&A sessions with fruit tree expert Orin Martin, manager of the Alan Chadwick Garden. Learn about varieties that perform well on the Central Coast, along with fruit tree care tips.

 For more information, contact 831.459-3240 or casfs@ucsc.edu or visit their website here.