TGIF Joins the Student Environmental Resource Center

Posted on 04/02/2014 by TGIF Posted in Campus Green Funds, Sustainability, TGIF, UC Berkeley .

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Green Initiative Fund joins the Student Environmental Resource Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

April 2, 2014

Berkeley, CA- The Green Initiative Fund (TGIF), UC Berkeley’s campus green fund, recently became an official program of the new Student Environmental Resource Center. The Student Environmental Resource Center, known by its Berkeley acronym “SERC”, cultivates a collaborative space to strengthen the collective effectiveness of the sustainability community, and provides resources for students to actualize their visions of a more equitable, socially just, and resilient future.

The Student Environmental Resource Center was envisioned in 2012 by UC Berkeley students who, inspired by campus centers such as the Multicultural Community Center (MCC) and the Gender Equity Resource Center (GenEq), determined the need for a similar campus center for the student environmental and sustainability community. The SERC student leaders received initial advising and financial support from The Green Initiative Fund, when SERC was awarded a 2012 TGIF grant. SERC officially opened its doors in October 2012, with its first few months in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Student Union, thanks to the generosity of the Cal Student Bookstore. With the impending closure of the Union due to the Lower Sproul Redevelopment project, the SERC student leaders presented a space proposal to the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management (ESPM).

ESPM graciously granted Mulford Hall room 337 to SERC beginning February 2013, and SERC has subsequently flourished. SERC held its first Environmental Town Hall shortly thereafter, with an estimated 100 students gathering to discuss pressing campus, local, and global environmental issues. Additional spring 2013 programming highlights included hosting the California Student Sustainability Coalition’s Convergence, a GreenCorps Workshop, and a Green Careers Networking Event with PowerSave Campus.

Beginning fall 2013, SERC transitioned from registered student organization to University supported functional area within the LEAD Center, thanks to a $125,000 CACSSF Grant and TGIF’s continuous advising support. This transition included hiring the first SERC staff director in December and adding The Green Initiative Fund to the SERC portfolio, recognizing TGIF and SERC’s shared history of being student-initiated sustainability-focused campus programs, and TGIF’s reputation as a national model for campus green funds. TGIF has awarded over $1.6 million in grants to one hundred eleven (111) campus sustainability projects since its inaugural grant cycle in 2008. These grants have included the funding of two hundred (200) student internships, with the students working an estimated 12,000+ hours on TGIF-funded projects.

In addition to The Green Initiative Fund, SERC will be offering the following programs and services:

Zero Waste Research Center (in partnership with Campus Recycling and Refuse Services)
ECO Leadership Board
Student Environmental Training Program
SERC Workshop Series
Words of the Watershed Blog
Words of the Watershed Journal
Words of the Watershed Workshop Series
Mixed Greens Socials (in partnership with the ASUC)
SERC Library
SERC Career Series (in partnership with the Career Center)
DeCal: Communicating Sustainability
DeCal: Introduction to Sustainability & Environmentalism at UC Berkeley
DeCal: Student Environmental Activism
Nourish, a Green Bag Lunch Series
Environmental Organization Database
The Den: Hibernated Projects Clearinghouse
California Student Sustainability Coalition Chapter
Student Org Green Certification Program
Town Halls
Earth Week Leadership
SERC Mobile Application
Peer and staff advising for students and student orgs
Support for students to attend related conferences and trainings
Connections with on and off-campus environmental and sustainability resources
Advertising for student organization activities
Physical space for meetings, project workspace, campaign planning, etc.

The TGIF Coordinator and SERC Director will continue to work out of the LEAD Center (102 Hearst Gym), while Mulford Hall 337 will continue to serve as the SERC student space, until a new campus space is secured- a space that can support all SERC staff, community members, programs, and services.

Thus far, SERC has overcome the space constraints, offering 3 DeCals, the Words of the Watershed Blog, Workshop Series, and Journal, fundraising for 13 students to attend PowerShift 2013 in Pittsburgh, PA, and co-hosting the 2014 Energy, Environment, and Natural Resources Career Fair with the Career Center. Upcoming SERC-supported programs include UC Berkeley’s Earth Week, a Start Your Own Business Workshop with solidariTEA, and UC Berkeley representation at the California Student Sustainability Coalition’s Spring Convergence. The 2014 TGIF Grant Awards will be announced early May.

Questions regarding this announcement can be directed to Katherine Walsh at kwalsh@berkeley.edu. For future related announcements, sign-up for the SERC e-newsletter.

Who Knew? An Environmentally Preferred Office Products Road Show at UC Berkeley

Posted on 02/06/2014 by TGIF Posted in Campus Green Funds, Education & Behavior Change, Sustainability, TGIF, UC Berkeley, Waste Reduction .

The Zero Waste Research Center is planning more Environmental Preferred Office Products Road Shows for this Spring! The purpose of the EPP Road Show is to help educate the campus on certain environmentally preferred products in UC Berkeley’s Bear Buy purchasing system, selected by in depth research by the Zero Waste Research Center.

The project got started in June 2013, when Emily McKeon and Lin King of Campus Recycling and Refuse Service’s Zero Waste Research Center partnered with Sandy Macasieb of UC Berkeley Procurement and Scott Hrudicka of OfficeMax to produce a simplified list of environmentally preferred office products. They then contacted vendors including Pilot, Sanford, and 3M.

An example of an environmentally preferable item is the Pilot B2P pen. The pen is made of recycled PET #1 water bottles, can be recycled if it breaks, and is refillable – which is so much better than commonly-used pens that are constantly being thrown away when the ink runs out. The ultimate goal is for the primary office supply purchasers to order pen refills instead of the actual pens. The same also applies for some dry erase makers that now offer refill cartridges.

A typical EPP Road Show is two hours in the lobby or common area of a campus building, and involves tabling by Zero Waste Research staff, OfficeMax, and Pilot. The three organizations provide samples of Office Max and Pilot products featured on the environmentally preferred list and information on why these products are the more sustainable options.

Zero Waste Research Enviro Road Show (2)

The first EPP Road Show took place on Thursday, November 14, 2013 from 11:00am- 1:30pm at Campus Shared Services (CSS) and it was a great success! The team is now in the process of planning the 2014 calendar for the monthly EPP Road Show. There is a list of eleven possible campus buildings for the event: California Hall, 2000 Carleton (PPCS), Boalt Hall, Sproul Hall, Mulford Hall, Lawrence Hall of Science, Stanley Hall, Haas Business School, Energy Biosciences Building, Warren Hall, and Sutardja Dai. Keep your eyes and ears open for which building will be next!

For more information, read the November 2013 UC News Center article.

-Written by Claire Kaufman, TGIF Program Associate

Apply for Spring Grants!

Posted on 01/14/2014 by TGIF Posted in Campus Green Funds, Sustainability, TGIF, UC Berkeley .

Happy New Year and welcome to TGIF’s favorite time of the year… Spring Grant Season! We are looking forward to reading through your applications (the early abstract submission deadline is January 31st). There is always more to be done to help UC Berkeley be more sustainable and reach its campus sustainability goals. Check out the TGIF website for past project ideas, and feel free to email us if you need any assistance. We can’t wait to read your applications!

The Human Powered Elliptical is now in the RSF!

Posted on 12/17/2013 by TGIF Posted in Campus Green Funds, Education & Behavior Change, Energy Conservation & Efficiency, Sustainability, TGIF .

On November 5, the TGIF funded human powered elliptical was installed at UC Berkeley’s Recreational Sports Facility. Now, when you exercise, your energy will power a charger for your phone and will power the elliptical. Be sure to check it out – it is located right near the RSF entrance.

The Human Powered Gym Project was originally started by a ME undergraduate Maha Haji and a ME graduate student Kimberly Lau in 2010. They saw a potential for harnessing energy from the RSF exercise machines and thought that it would be a great way to harness power for the RSF, and first created a basic prototype using a bike.

Jodi Loo, the current project lead, got involved in September 2011, initially as a member on the elliptical sub-team, working on the technical design for the elliptical. “I wanted to get involved because I was excited about how I could participate in impacting sustainability in the Berkeley community,” said Loo. Since September 2011, their team worked on various retrofit designs to finally come up with the one currently in the RSF.

The team’s research showed that retrofitting the ellipticals (~28 of them) in the RSF would only generate ~1% of the RSF’s yearly energy usage, and the treadmills alone consume 12% of the RSF’s energy usage. The project shifted its focus from putting the human-powered energy back into the grid to creating something interactive and educational for RSF patrons. The new educational campaign team has created signage and slides (for the RSF multimedia screens) to create awareness around energy consumption and conservation. The education team also hopes to promote the use of an elliptical over a treadmill because of the large discrepancy in energy consumption. As for measuring the amount of power generated by the elliptical, the team has developed a data acquisition system, which will soon be installed with the machine.

“We’ve had a very positive and enthusiastic response from the RSF administration that has been very helpful in allowing us to move our retrofitted machines to the RSF and promote our education campaign. I think overall, we have had a very positive response from the Berkeley campus and community itself through various media outlets,” said Loo.

The project has been featured on the UC Berkeley Facebook page, garnering almost 600 likes and over 90 shares. In addition, the video article made by the UC Berkeley College of Engineering Innovations publication has gotten over 1600 views, and counting! “I think the response is great, and we hope that we can improve upon this initial design and launch to make it even better,” said Loo.

Thank you to Jodi Loo for providing the information for this article.

-article written by TGIF Program Associate Claire Kaufman

TGIF Awards Mini-Grants to Ten Projects!

Posted on 12/05/2013 by TGIF Posted in Campus Green Funds, Sustainability, TGIF, UC Berkeley .

TGIF is excited to announce the winners of the November 2013 Mini-Grants! TGIF received a record 18 applications requesting a total of $24,611.80 and selected ten applications, awarding a combined total of $16,269.88.

Project Name	Applicant	Award	Description
BSFC Operational Sustainability Intern	Jeff Noven, Candace Rankin	$2,000.00	The TGIF Grant will pay for a student intern within the Collective to synthesize store-related data gathered by already-funded interns (and volunteer members) into concrete ways in which the Food Collective can increase its capacity to customers.
California Grassland Restoration	Jennifer Podvin, Ariel Cherbowsky	$1,500.00	The TGIF Grant will fund two restoration projects to completion, which seek to restore California native plant species and habitat through the collaboration of UC Berkeley students and local community volunteers. The projects will take place in the Grinnell Natural Area and near the West Oval Glade.
College of Chemistry Chemical Reuse Facility Expansion	Michael Kumpf, Emery Wilson	$2,000.00	The TGIF Grant will pay for a student intern to assist with the implementation of a College of Chemistry reuse program for lecture bottle‐size compressed gases.
Community: A Garden Project	Grace Lihn, Leo Steinmetz	$1,200.00	The TGIF Grant will enable the transformation of an unused garden space at Clark Kerr Campus into a sustainable community garden which the residents of Clark Kerr can use both as a recreational space and as an organized garden to grow their own vegetables.
Designated Reuse Bins	Tasha Dowdakin, Dan Clipson	$1,966.56	The TGIF Grant will allow for the purchase of six industrial bins on wheels to be used for reuse/move-out campus projects.
Food Bikery Prototype	Jason Trager, John Romankiewicz	$2,000.00	The TGIF Grant will prototype a licensable food bike that can be used by the Food Collective as the prototype model for the Food Bikery- a cooperative of food bikes that can be used as legal foodservice platforms in the Bay Area.
Fostering Community: Clark Kerr Lawns to Meadows	Russell Huang, Alexandra Lalor	$2,000.00	The TGIF Grant will fund the conversion of an underused lawn on Clark Kerr campus into a more student-friendly area with native drought-resistant plants, modeled after the TGIF funded Lawns to Meadows project.
Installing Recycling Bins at Clark Kerr Dorm Rooms	Eva Malis, Jordan French	$1,700.00	The TGIF Grant will enable the installation of recycling bins in 327 res hall rooms at Clark Kerr.
Ohlone Ethnobotany Garden	Ariel Cherbowsky	$800.00	The TGIF Grant will enable collaboration with the Ohlone community to create a gathering space in an area upland of Strawberry Creek within the Grinnell Natural Area of the UC Berkeley central campus that will also serve as an educational resource regarding the Ohlone community’s indigenous land management practices and uses of native plants.
Stop Waste in Sororities	Emily McKeon	$1,103.32	The TGIF Grant will close the gap in the recycling and composting bins needed throughout the Cal Greek Sororities. Most existing bins were already funded by TGIF back in 2012.
TOTAL		$16,269.88

With the addition of the November Mini-Grants, TGIF has now awarded grants to 110 projects, 84 spring grant projects and 26 mini-grant projects, for a combined total of $1,607,748.31.

TGIF will soon be adding the project pages for each November mini-grant winner to the TGIF website. Check back in January for details on these projects.