Spring Grants

These projects were funded during our Spring grant cycle, where projects receive more than $5,000 for projects that take between one to three years to complete. 

GIF Haas Rechargeable Battery program

Project Description

In an effort to continuously make significant strides towards true zero waste and in line with the university’s “Non-Essential Single Use Plastic Elimination by 2030 Policy”, Haas would like to implement a rechargeable battery program that would be available to all Haas students, staff and faculty. The impact of eliminating single use batteries and plastic packaging from the waste stream would make a huge impact not only on Haas’ carbon footprint, but on the university as a whole.

Project Links

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BerkeleyMoves! Parking and Transportation Program and Data Evaluation Intern

Project Description This project will address several aspects of parking and the environmental impacts between pricing for permits and comparison of TDM programs to benchmark ourselves with developing a new transit and mobility plan to better serve the campus; finding out about impacts of an optional carbon offsetting program and fee, which may be optional to the user, to support additional mobility programs supported by findings of the LRDP but also the TDM strategic plan; identifying the correlation of students who commute to campus and making the case to the University about...

Zero Waste Coalition Vice Chair

Project Description

The Zero Waste Coalition (ZWC) is comprised of over a dozen organizations, both departmental and student-led, focused on waste-related work at UC Berkeley. Since its founding in 2019, ZWC efforts led by the Chair and Vice Chair include: Establishing and supporting the implementation of a Non-Essential Single Use Plastic Elimination Policy by 2030; Establishing and facilitating a Zero Waste Lab of undergraduate student researchers; Collaborating directly with the Student Environmental Resource Center and the Students of Color Environmental Collective (SCEC) to host...

Heated and cooled chairs for comfort

Project Description

Demonstrate the comfort effects of heated/cooled chairs for UCB students, and also their energy benefit, in a total of three campus buildings. The goal is to encourage campus-wide adoption of PCS. The approach is: 1) design and fabricate 10 battery-powered heating/cooling cassettes that attach to chairs on UCB’s purchase list; 2) demonstrate comfort effects for students in a library and a common room in a dorm; 3) quantify the HVAC energy savings potential in one open-plan office space.

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Healing the Pavement on Campus

Project Description

Recycling concrete offers a sustainable path for pavement maintenance. Massive concrete wastes are generated in the civil and environmental engineering (CEE) structural laboratory every year because of undergraduate education and scientific research demand. The existing waste concrete disposal such as “landfill” is expensive ($400/ton) and unsustainable. This project aims at wasted concrete recycling for campus infrastructure repairing, mainly focusing on the maintenance of cracked pavements, to fulfill a win-win situation for both the CEE department and Berkeley...

Student Fellows Activating Campus

Project Description

This project proposes a team of students in fellowship roles to develop and implement key priority strategies of the plans. Fellow positions include:
Environmental Justice Fellowships: identifying how the OS can improve diversity, equity and inclusion in practices and policies; Air Travel Mitigation Program Fellow: activate a pilot mitigation program currently in design that proposes assessing a fee on air tickets to build a fund for projects that reduce carbon emissions on campus and promote more sustainable alternative travel; Sustainable Science Fellows:...

Summer Agroecology and Sustainability

Project Description

This project seeks to maintain the functionality of Berkeley Student Farms during the upcoming summer, when we expect volunteer numbers to decrease and gardens to be left unattended; last summer we averaged 3 volunteers per workday compared to 62 in the fall. Through the support of TGIF, BSF aims to hire 5 summer Garden Managers who will continue the essential farm work needed to maintain critical garden operations: growing organic produce, leading student volunteers, coordinating food donations, and maintaining our compost systems, as well as renovating our...

Amplifying Sanctuary Voices: Climate Migration and Environmental Justice

Project Description

Amplifying Sanctuary Voices (ASV) is a storytelling project centered around migrant communities in the Bay Area. We believe that informed public discourse on immigration and climate change that centers the people whose lives are most affected is essential to promoting empathy, connected communities, and civic participation. ASV uses arts-based, trauma-informed methods to promote resiliency and healing for narrators and shares stories of migration to promote action for more fair immigration policies.

Project Links

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Vermicomposting by Zero Waste Resource Center

Project Description

The vermicomposting bin has been actively processing organic food waste from the Clark Kerr Kitchen primarily, as well as the Crossroads Kitchen, since then. Currently, around ten gallons of food waste are being added to the bin per week, but it has the capacity to increase. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, coordinating food waste pickup while abiding by city and university public health guidelines has been disadvantageous, but we plan to increase the volume of food waste added to the bin once pandemic conditions allow. We have built up a system...

Project RISHI Rainwater Harvesting

Project Description

The first goal for our proposed project is hosting a sustainable design and development-focused summit where we will invite UC Berkeley students from diverse backgrounds. This will serve as an opportunity for Berkeley students to apply their skills and knowledge about sustainability to a real-world project, and to raise awareness about water-insecurity projects, development, and technology. Through collaboration with students and organizations across campus, we will redesign our RH system and implementation process, improving their longevity, cost-efficiency, and...