Projects Funded in 2019-2020
Two UCSC Vanpool Bike Racks
Allocated Funds: $1,900.00
For over 25 years, Transportation and Parking Services (TAPS) has provided a successful vanpool program to UCSC. There are over 13 vanpools that assist faculty, staff, and students with commuting to UCSC. Because some students and employees ride a bicycle to the Vanpool pick up point, a request for two 3-bike capacity racks for two vanpools was made and granted so that this mode of transportation could be utilized. See more here.
Reduce GHG Emissions of Satellite Campuses
Allocated Funds: $400.00
This project was led by a Carbon Neautrality Initiative (CNI) fellow in an effort to reduce GHG emissions of satellite campuses. This effort involved traveling to the satellite campuses to talk about GHG emissions and how to get offices Green Office Certified. They planned to measure CO2e reductions through employee's participation in the Cool Campus Challenge (CCC), and planned to use the card game, "Cards Against Catastrophe," during their presentations and meetings to the satellite campuses, so that participants of these meetings could think of ways they could mitigate climate change, and hopefully, employ these ideas to their own lives.
Transitioning Landscaping Equipment from Gas Power to Battery Power
Allocated Funds: $2,670.26
This project led by the Landscape Maintenance Crew in charge of Family Student Housing, Graduate Student Housing, The Trailer Park and the Village involved the purchase of an extended hedge trimmer, a regular hedge trimmer, a string trimmer, a chain saw, a backpack battery, and a battery pack to transition their landscape equipment from gas power to battery power. See more here.
Smart Slug Bin
Allocated Funds: $500.00
The goal of this senior design project, led by eight enginnering students and their professors, was to implement a smart bin in the UCSC community to reduce contamination from getting into the recycling bins. This group of engineering students was divided into a mechanical team, power team, sensor team, and software team to work on separate objectives for the project, such as how the bin would sort trash, check whether the recycables were contaminated, and check if the bins were full.
Replacing the Biology Teaching Laboratory’s energy-inefficient and water-hungry industrial dishwasher
Allocated Funds: $10,000.00
The Biology Teaching Laboratories Manager, Assistant Energy Manager, and Purchasing Agent and Strategic Energy Partnership Program Liasion replaced the biology teaching laboratory's energy-inefficient and water-hungry industrial dishwasher with a new, energy and water-efficient dishwasher. See more here.
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEBiology) E-bikes
Allocated Funds: $4,000.00
The Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) Department purchased two e-bikes, a RadBikes RadWagon and RadRover, for graduate students, faculty, visiting researchers and staff to use to travel between the Coastal Sciences Campus (CSC) and Science Hill on UCSC's main campus to reduce the carbon footprint of local transportation. See more here.
Pallet Palace
Allocated Funds: $5,000.00
Students in the IDEASS Lab course through Rachel Carson College (RCC) plan to build 300-400 square feet affordable houses comprised largely of repurposed materials to reduce housing costs, raw material use, and carbon emissions. One design feature is the use of pallets to frame the house's structure. See more here.
Bike Program
Allocated Funds: $10,000.00
The Bike Program is led by the Strategic Development Director, Ecology Action Team, and TAPS. The goal of this project was to reduce drive alone trips to, from, and on the UCSC campus by increasing bike, ebike, and JUMP bike trips through direct education and outreach activities.
PICA: Student Education Toward Fresh, Nutritious Food Production Through Increased Composting Efficiency
Allocated Funds: $3,000.00
The student run and student led organization, PICA (The Program in Community and Agroecology), was involved in this project to increase compost education. A system that combines both composting and vermicomposting was taught and utilized. Food waste was collected from the Village's residential building's compost buckets to put into the PICA worm bin to create nutrient rich earthworm castings for the PICA garden. Vegetable waste from the CASFS Field and the Farm Garden was also used to create compost piles to add to the worm bins. Students learned how to grow their own organic, nutrient rich food at home from inexpensive and readily available resources. See more here.
FSH Grounds Electric Equipment
Allocated Funds: $1,014.00
The lead groundskeeper for Family Student Housing (FSH) purchased an electic lawn mower and an electric leaf blower to replace FSH Grounds' gas mower and gas leaf blower. See more here.
Integrating a Roller-Crimper at the CASFS farm for water retention and decreased CO2
Allocated Funds: $4,500.00
The ENVS graduate student and student staff involved in this project experimented with different strategies to roller crimp summer and winter cover crops on the CASFS farm. Roller crimpers terminate cover crops by rolling them down and crimping their stems. The cover crop residues can be left as mulch and as a weed barrier to help retain water and allow for the soil to not be tilled. This project intends to learn more about which specific cover crops work in our central coast region and how to improve the use of the roller crimper. See more here.
Fleet Incentives for All-Electric Sedans
Allocated Funds: $23,727.00
The Carbon Fund payed the difference in upfront cost between five hybrids and five all electric Nissan leafs for UCSC Fleet Services. See more here.
Incubator Replacement Program
Allocated Funds: $28,641.00
Sustainability Office staff plan to increase energy efficiency in UCSC labs by replacing old and inefficient incubators with new and efficient ones. See more here.
Thimann Autoclave
Allocated Funds: $13,845.00
A new autoclave for the Biology Teaching Laboratory (BTL) in Thimann labs that does not require use of a boiler or any natural gas was purchased by the Biology Teaching Laboratories Manager to reduce the use of the BTL's older autoclave that relies upon an inefficient steam boiler. See more here.
Energy efficient lighting in the Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery (Cowell College)
Allocated Funds: $10,000.00
The Director of the Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery, Manager of the Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery, and the Cowell College Academic Program Coordinator replaced the current energy inefficient lighting system in the Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery with a new energy efficient LED lighting system. See more here.
2020 Freezer Incentive Program
Allocated Funds: $20,000.00
The Green Labs Team are incentivizing the purchase of 10 -80 ultra low efficient freezers at $2,000 a freezer to target energy efficiency improvements in UCSC's labs. See more here.
