UC students pressed the university to adopt clean energy policies and green building practices. Their persistence paid off in 2003 when UC enacted its first university-wide Sustainable Practices Policy, which set operational standards in areas including climate, energy, food, transportation, water and more. The goals have become increasingly ambitious over the years. Today, UC is looking to zero-out its carbon footprint, divert 90 percent of its waste from landfills, and use only clean electricity by 2025. You can track its progress in the just-released Annual Report on Sustainable Practices.
Chou Hall is officially the country’s greenest academic building, having earned TRUE Zero Waste certification at the highest possible level along with a LEED Platinum certification for its energy efficient design and operation. The TRUE Platinum Zero Waste certification came after more than a year of dedicated waste sorting, composting, and other efforts to divert over 90 percent of Chou’s landfill waste. The Chou Hall Zero Waste Initiative is a joint effort led by a multidisciplinary team of graduate and undergraduate students working closely with Cal Zero Waste, Haas faculty and staff, facilities management, and building vendors to ensure that building operations are designed for successful waste diversion.
The University of California system is committed to emitting zero-net greenhouse gases by 2025, and UC Davis is leading the way by already functioning like a living lab for applied sustainability and climate research. For example, its TherMOOstat app allows faculty, staff and students to report room temperatures in campus buildings to more efficiently heat and cool spaces. The Sustainable Campus, Sustainable Cities initiative will engage students in transforming the UC Davis campus into a practical-solutions showcase demonstrating how communities can significantly reduce GHG emissions even while growing. Students will collaborate with renowned faculty and staff experts to discover, test and implement solutions, at scale and in real time.
Tens of thousands of people visit NRS reserves each year as part of class field trips, to conduct research, attend hikes, and much more. The system's new use of data visualizations let you see for yourself just how busy reserves are. These interactive maps, charts, and graphs answer questions such as how many people visit each reserve, how long they stay, and how many publications each reserve has inspired. Other visualizations depict information such as an interactive map of the NRS, the facilities available at each reserve, and how the library of natural protected areas has grown over time.
Providing another option for students facing food insecurity, UC Santa Barbara has opened a food pantry at Sierra Madre Villages. With the winter academic quarter now underway, the recently opened Miramar Food Pantry is accessible to any qualifying UCSB student — and especially so to the approximately 5,000 Gauchos living closer to it than to the A.S. Food Bank inside the University Center. Open three days per week, the new facility replaces a small dry food pantry at West Campus Family Housing as well as a mobile pantry that rotated between university apartment complexes.
