Green Campus End of Year Meeting and UC/CSU Sustainability Conference

June/July 2006

This year’s California Sustainability Conference honored the great ambitions of many University of California, California State University, and California Community College campuses. The event, held from June 24-27 at UC Santa Barbara, was a chance to celebrate a successful year for Green Campus Interns and Alliance team members. The UC and CSU Green Campus Intern teams that won the Student Energy Efficiency Best Practice Award this year presented during the Green Campus session.

This year’s conference featured sessions broken down into tracks: Water, curriculum and research, energy, green building EB/CI, green building NC, institutionalizing sustainability, procurement, recycling and waste management, transportation, and student affairs. It also included field trips, film screenings, and the much-anticipated awards dinner.

Green Campus Interns at UC Irvine and Humboldt State were this year’s Best Practice award winners while interns from UC Santa Cruz, CSU San Bernardino, and CSU Chico all received honorable mentions in the Student Energy Efficiency Award category. Interns from all five campuses presented during the Green Campus conference session, and UC Irvine and Humboldt State Green Campus Interns were honored during an awards ceremony immediately following the Green Campus conference session on Monday night.

Among their many achievements, Humboldt State University worked with many segments of their campus, including offices where they performed audits, student centers where they exchanged almost 1,000 Compact Fluorescent Lamps, and housing and dining services where they created the position of Energy Management Intern. They also created sustainability signage for several buildings, made a fun and educational video called The Phantom Hunter, showed The Inconvenient Truth and episodes of Captain Planet, and held a December event called The Twelve Days of Saving.

UC Irvine emphasized saving energy in dorms, especially freshman dorms. Interns implemented laminated posters with new energy-saving tips weekly to integrate energy-saving into everyday life, held competitions between dorms, and distributed 1,006 Compact Fluorescent Lamps. A Green Tour Dorm Room is underway as well, featuring all Energy Star and organic products. They work with labs on campus, using innovative methods to encourage lab users to close the 180 fume hoods while not in use, performing lab audits, and holding competitions between labs. They have also embarked on bi-level lighting projects, participation in the Campus Sustainability Steering Committee, a huge event called Green Day that included a visit from the Energy Star bus and a bike raffle, and have made strides with UC Irvine dining services.

This year's conference brought other reasons to celebrate as well: It was the largest ever, with over 800 attendees. 300 of those were students.

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