Impact Award: Beyond a Personal Commitment

Reducing waste for the Chancellor's Sustainability Challenge requires building awareness and educating yourself and others. The Chancellor is sponsoring an Impact Award, which includes a cash prize of up to $300 and recognition by the Chancellor for implementing a project or experience that raise awareness about the need to reduce waste at UCSC. More information, ideas, and award details are available here.

Share Cycling Data with CycleTracks App to Improve Routes

There are so many ways to choose sustainable transportation in Santa Cruz. One great way is biking!

Last month's Bike to Work Day on October 10 set a UCSC record for the highest turnout to-date! In total, 201 people on bikes stopped by the UCSC sites at the Base of Campus, Quarry Plaza, and the top of the Bike Path. Earlier this year in the spring, 137 people participated, and last fall, 188 people biked to campus for this day that celebrates bike commuting. Learn more about October's event here.

To continue the bicycle advocacy that happened on Bike to Work Day and to provide feedback that will help improve infrastructure for people who bike in Santa Cruz, Monterey, and San Benito counties, participate in recording your bicycle trips through a new application called Cycle Tracks.


The Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments is working to develop a planning tool that will help make the Monterey Bay Area, including Santa Cruz, an even better place to bike. This tool will assist local governments in identifying the best places to plan for new bicycle routes throughout the tri-county region.

The Association will be collecting data from the region’s bicyclists using the CycleTracks mapping applications. To help contribute, you can either log your bike trips on the CycleTracks Monterey website or download the smartphone application and map your routes while you ride. You can also help by getting your friends, family, and colleagues to log their trips. The information collected will be sent to our secure server to be used in helping us better understand what factors influence the routes that area cyclists bike along. No personal information will be released.

For more information visit cycletracksmonterey.org or find them on Facebook.

November 2013: Contests & Funding

The UCSC Carbon Fund Wants You!: Applications due November 15
The Carbon Fund is accepting applications for project funding! The Carbon Fund is a student-passed fee measure that raises $3 per student per quarter totaling up to ~$100,000 per year to allocate to students, faculty, and staff for their project ideas! This year they have over $200,000 to allocate in funding due to rollover from previous years! If you have any project ideas that reduce the carbon footprint of UCSC, from energy and water conversation to more efficient composting and zero waste techniques, the Carbon Fund has money for your project! For more information, email the Carbon Fund at carbonfund.ucsc@gmail.com and check out their website. Abstracts are due November 15th.

Impact Award: Beyond the Personal Challenge
Reducing waste for the Chancellor's Sustainability Challenge requires building awareness and educating yourself and others. The Chancellor is sponsoring an Impact Award, which includes a cash prize of up to $300 and recognition by the Chancellor for implementing a project or experience that raise awareness about the need to reduce waste at UCSC. More information, ideas and award details are available here.

Net Impact's "Small Steps, Big Wins" Campus Challenge: Ends December 1
Small Steps, Big Wins is a university-focused national student competition to spark undergraduates into doing positive social and environmental actions such as donating blood, recycling or organizing a volunteer day. Join your school and participate in the challenge here. The competition closes on December 1.

Agricultural Innovation Prize 
Interested in participating in the largest agriculture-focused student competition in the world? Share your agricultural challenges and compete for a chance to win the Agricultural Innovational Prize and up to $100,000. The competition is open to U.S. undergraduate and graduate students across all academic disciplines and runs through spring 2014. The contest encourages student teams to develop innovative plans to address social and agricultural challenges within food systems, improving the standard of living and quality of life for the world's population. Additional information about how to participate is available on the website.

Challenge Your Perspectives – The Swedish Scholarship Awards 2014
Two winners will be awarded with full tuition waivers for Master’s of Science programs at two prestigious Swedish universities: Stockholm University and Lund University. If you are interested, enter the challenge here and begin to fill out the application for a chance to win a full tuition fee waiver for either of the Swedish schools.

Zipcar Seeks "Students With Drive"
The "Students with Drive" program is giving student groups an extra hand to help get things done with the help of Zipcars. The program, which gives away over $35,000 in driving credit a month, allows all student groups to nominate themselves to win free driving credit for their group to use for their groups' needs. In 2013, Alpha Phi Omega won $5,000 in driving credit to help students get to their community service events and in 2013, the Sabrosura Dance Troupe won $1,000 to take their dance shows into the community. Learn more about how your group can get involved on the contest website.

Move-In 2013 Diverts 41% of Waste from Landfill

After students move in to their dorms and apartments at UC Santa Cruz, their lives settle in among all of the redwood trees and the many things they brought to their rooms in boxes. But what happens to all of those cardboard boxes, Styrofoam containers, and plastic film after they're unpacked for the year?

This year, 41.71% of the 38,189.84 total pounds of move-in waste containing those boxes and other materials was diverted away from landfill, with the largest portion containing 7.51 tons of cardboard.

Let's break down the diversion numbers into recognizable amounts.

Campus zero waste efforts this September diverted 15,013 pounds of cardboard from the landfill, which is the equivalent of 3.23 Tesla Model S electric sports cars by weight.

The second largest amount of diverted material from Move-In was 494 pounds of polystyrene foam, or Styrofoam. In average-sized, ten-pound pumpkins, that's nearly 50 pumpkins--and Styrofoam is really lightweight!

The third major recycled material was plastic film, which weighs even less than Styrofoam. 423 pounds of plastic film were diverted, the equivalent of nearly 17 average, 25-pound bicycles.

That's a lot of recyclable materials that were fortunately rescued from the landfill and sent off to be recycled! But what does waste diversion actually look like on move-in day? We asked some Student Sustainability Advisors (SSA) to share their experiences.

"This year, the Student Sustainability Advisors assisted Residential Life and Physical Plant staff in their recycling of a range of materials as new and continuing students moved in this September," shared Nuttha Mahakanchanakul, the SSA for Family Student Housing. "We asked parents and students to help us sort and break down cardboard boxes and even taught them a few tips on how to recycle different materials." 

The SSAs worked at all of the different move-in stations throughout Welcome Week. Nuttha Mahakanchanakul also shared that "staff were a great help and we had a good time learning how to make a real  difference in keeping the 'streams' of recycling clean as they are heading to the City's Resource and Recovery Facility."

"Cardboard corrals," stations designated for cardboard, plastic film, and Styrofoam collection, were stationed throughout the colleges so that residents and families could easily sort recycling after moving in. Stephanie Lara, the SSA for Porter and Kresge Colleges shared about her experience with parents during move-in: "After mistakenly putting a cardboard box in the trash dumpster, a parent was kind enough to hop in and retrieve it! It was an amazing bit of dumpster diving skill... Quite a few parents were also interested in what UCSC does regarding sustainability and waste management. I was more than happy to give a small overview--it felt so good to provide a link to our behind-the-scenes activities that help us near our larger waste goals on campus!"

Congratulations to everyone who participated in helping divert move-in waste away from the landfill! This diversion was possible thanks to a collaboration between Grounds Services and Colleges, Housing & Educational Services (CHES), including Residential Life staff at each of the residential colleges and the new Student Sustainability Advisors at each sister college. 

What can you do to to reduce waste at UCSC?

La versión en español acompañará la publicación de este mensaje.

It has been years since I broke the habit of drinking bottled water. I rarely print documents anymore--and when I do, I print on both sides of the paper. Today, my travel mug is so well-used that the UCSC emblem is almost completely worn away.

These are three things I do to reduce my environmental footprint. What can you do? 

It's an important question, because UCSC has committed to becoming a zero-waste campus by 2020. Today, the campus diverts about two-thirds of its trash from the landfill. Getting a handle on that last third is going to require a commitment from each of us. 

That's why I'm launching the Chancellor's Sustainability Challenge this year with a focus on waste reduction. Did you know paper towels make up one-third of the campus's waste stream by volume? Last year's pilot program to reduce paper towel use at Stevenson College was so successful that we're expanding it this year to all residence halls. We need everyone to chip in on this, though. Think about bringing a personal hand towel to work, or clipping one to your backpack. It may seem odd today, but I suspect personal hand towels will soon be as commonplace on campus as reusable water bottles. 

There's more each of us can do, from composting food waste in the dining halls to participating in our Green Office andGreen Labs certification programs. Visit the Chancellor's Sustainability Challenge website for ideas and information.

I also want to congratulate the UCSC Office of Sustainability on the just-released Campus Sustainability Plan 2013-16, a comprehensive document that is guiding our path forward. Many people across campus contributed research and hard work to produce this plan, just as many students, staff, and faculty contribute day in and day out to the good work that is making UCSC a greener campus. I am grateful.

I leave you with one final thought: A recent analysis revealed that UCSC uses 1 billion sheets of office paper annually. Remember that the next time you go to hit "print"!


-Chancellor's Office

Perk Bars Now Water Bottle-Free

Dining is pleased to announce that with the opening of Fall quarter, all Perk Coffee Bars are no longer selling bottled water! This now completes Dining's transition to a single-use-water-bottle-free department! All of the academic buildings that contain these coffee bars had hydration stations installed in convenient locations, allowing guests to fill their own reusable bottles with tap water.

This action supports the campus Take Back the Tap initiative and the Chancellor's Sustainability Challenge to reduce waste! You can purchase refillable bottles at all dining operated retail locations for only $4.99 +tax! Read more on Dining's website.

UC Santa Cruz Carbon Fund: Come and Receive Funding for your Project Ideas

The Carbon Fund is an organization on campus that allocates funds to projects. Our goal is to reduce the carbon footprint both on campus and throughout the Santa Cruz community. The Carbon Fund provides grants for students, staff, and faculty projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, conduct relevant research, or carry out education and behavioral change programs. This year we have $250,000 to give away in grants. If your interested in applying, there will be an information session on Tuesday, October 15^th in the College 8 Red Room from 4-6pm and abstracts are due November 15th at 11:59pm online. If you have more questions, please feel free to visit our website: http://tinyurl.com/carbonfunducsc or email us at: carbonfund.ucsc@gmail.edu