May 2019: Cool Campus Challenge comes to an end!

Cool Campus Challenge is officially over! Throughout the month of April, students, faculty and staff across UC campuses participated in the challenge to see who can complete the most sustainable and environmental-friendly actions. The goal of this challenge is to reduce carbon footprint and achieve carbon neutrality by 2025.

UC Santa Cruz has demonstrated a huge effort in spreading outreach about the challenge. With everyone's valuable participation, we have acquired a total of 3,707,790 points putting us in 5th place amongst the UC campuses, and beating UC Davis by just a few actions. As a campus, we have completed 15,355 actions and reduced 1,756,542 pounds of CO2. Overall, we acquired the most actions and the most points per participant.

We had 36 teams across, and Team OChem has won first place with 898,963 points. Caitlin Binder, faculty in the Chemistry & Biochemistry Department, created a team for her organic chemistry students to learn about sustainable actions they can take to reduce their footprint. Caitlin's team got UCSC 24% of our points!

OChem was the only team in the whole UC System that got more points than the combination of all "no team" participants.


Action: "Highlight a Hero" - Thanks to some of the amazing slugs who were nominated multiple times as sustainability "Heroes" by their peers.

Top 10 UCSC Teams:
1. Team OChem
2. BAS
3. Team Social Sciences
4. University Relations
5. Library
6. Rachel Carson College
7. Kerr Hall
8. Crown College
9. Academic Affairs
10. SOMeCA Keeping Cool

Top 10 UCSC Point Earners:
1. Evelyn Subroto
2. Trevor Lee
3. Cindy Delgado
4. Michael Chung
5. Kyle Lutz
6. Gabriella Amberchan
7. Madison Landi
8. Michael Richie
9. Michael Pisano
10. Kyra Fitz

From going zero waste for a day, to taking alternative transportation to work, to installing clothes lines to hang dry clothes, banana slugs have been working hard throughout this month to reduce their emissions. Together, we are all taking steps towards making the world a better place.

Thank you for your participation and for your contribution towards our campus becoming more sustainable!