Bren School Sustainability Committee: Activities

Membership
Event Calendar
Activities
Bren Recycling
The Bren Building
Resources

BSSC
Bren Hall
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA
93106-5131

2009-10 Campaigns and Projects
Recyclemania	A friendly competition and benchmarking tool for college and university recycling programs, we generally host a week of activities promoting waste reduction on the UCSB campus community.
Cleanup & Restoration Events	Sponsored by AS’s Coastal Fund, we (as a campus organization) participate in one beach/street cleanup or restoration effort each quarter and receive organization funding.
Bren Hall Recycling Improvements	To prevent recyclables from ending up in the landfill, we are creating better signs for recycling bins, increasing the number of recycling bins in computer labs, and creating map of recycling locations in Bren Hall.
Student Orientation Recycling Video	We are in the first stages of creating a 3-4 minute video about recycling options and tips for Bren students that can be shown to incoming students at orientation to set higher recycling expectations.
Composting	We maintain Bren Hall worm bins and participate in the Ellison Hall Composting Coalition.
Annual Waste Audit	Every year we perform a waste audit for Bren Hall to understand how well our building users are recycling and target areas needing improvement.

Past Campaigns and Projects
Re-Think Your Thirst	"Rethink Your Thirst" was launched in 2009 by the Bren School Sustainability Committee (BSSC) as part of a nation-wide University event, RecycleMania.
Focus the Nation	We participated in this nationwide effort to teach and learn about global warming on January 31st, 2008.
LEED EB at Bren	We made efforts to get Bren the Platinum certification for existing buildings under the LEED program.
RE-campaign	We carried out an educational campaign aimed to remind everyone to REDUCE and then REUSE before they RECYCLE.
Theme week	A week were we focused on one issue, such as water conservation or plastic pollution, and made information available to the Bren community and the UCSB campus. Activities included: distributing pamphlets with candidate summaries to assist voting; screening the film “The Synthetic Sea” about the problem of plastics in the ocean; co-sponsoring Earth Day 2008 in Santa Barbara!

Future Projects
Banning Styrofoam at UCSB	A campaign to eliminate the use of Styrofoam at food vendors on the UCSB campus through educational campaigns and partnerships with other organizations.
Bren cups	An effort to provide a reusable cup to each incoming Bren student with the hope that they will be used at events and for every day activities around Bren Hall.