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. 

Putting the "Campus" in Campus Grocery: The Food Collective as a Full-Service Grocery in the Student Union

Project Description

The Collective serves over ten thousand student patrons each year with affordable, healthy, sustainable and local foods from minority vendors and farmers — including over 150 weekly student member-volunteers each semester — out of a small space never intended for food service with a highly-limited but functional grocery selection. We're returning to the Green Initiative Fund — the single most significant funder in building the Collective's skill sets and capacity over the past 12 years — to support us in fulfilling the longtime student vision for a dedicated...

Food Relatives Conference by the Food Institute Graduate Council

Project Description

By bridging academics, community leaders, consumers, and other vital actors within our food system, FIGC seeks to reinforce the goal of the Berkeley Food Institute (BFI): to understand and transform food systems in a cross-disciplinary manner in order to build a more resilient and equitable future within and beyond academic institutions. In 2022, FIGC ran a free-to the-public hybrid 2022 Conference, “Food Relatives: Decolonizing and Indigenizing the Global Food System” to connect scholars, community members, artists, and policy makers through varying...

Community-engaged engineering: a partnership with the AB 617 community in Stockton

Project Description

We request $45,975 to hire student interns to sustain environmental justice work being done by Berkeley engineering students with the Stockton AB 617 community to improve local air quality and address climate change. The AB 617 community in Southwest Stockton, CA ranks in the top 5% of the most disadvantaged communities in California. It is ranked in the worst 1% for overall pollution burden, and in the worst 4% for asthma rates. In Spring 2021, I developed a new community engaged design class (CE 105 Design for Global Transformation) where we worked with...

UC Berkeley Green Labs Program Research Community Trainings

Project Description

Our goal through organizing this project is to be able to close a gap between the research community and zero waste efforts. By educating undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers using My Green Labs Accredited Professionals training modules, we hope to achieve sustainability within research and teaching lab spaces at the community level. Using the My Green Labs materials that have already been created by professionals and that are available on a digital platform will allow the Program Associate and Intern to focus on disseminating...

Biofuel Technologies Club: Algae Solar Panel Project

Project Description

The Biofuels Technology Club (BTC) is a College of Chemistry club, whose committed mission is to achieve a zero-waste campus. By making biodiesel from waste cooking oil in the campus dining halls, the club has the goal of eventually powering campus fleets. Though CalDining continues to provide an excellent source of oil for feedstock, we have launched an experimental team to look into other potential sources if increased scale is needed. One key area of exploration is microalgae; as it produces lipid content, accumulates in biomass rapidly, and requires low-...

Greening Kroeber Art Studios and Bathrooms

Project Description

Develop a design/marketing campaign to create awareness in Kroeber Hall about sustainability.

Project Links

Project Application

Project Poster

Climate Break II

Project Description

CLEE created Climate Break as a means to discuss climate change with a wider audience in a different way than the typical focus on the inevitable negative impacts coming our way. Climate Break instead focuses on solutions in progress, via bite-sized audio clips of 90 seconds that fit as interstitial segments on radio stations nationwide and as easily distributed digital podcasts. With the experience of creating the clips, longer podcasts, and web material, and having experimented with the form, we now seek to apply lessons learned, add short video clips, and...

Reduction in Chemical Use at the UC Botanical Gardens

Project Description

Establish a compost tea brewing and application program as part of a pest management program.

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Project Application

Project Poster

Haas Hives Part 2

Haas School of Business is seeking funds to expand their current Hives at Haas mini-grant to build beehives at a new site, after using mini-grant funds to assess feasibility, conduct risk assessments, and obtain necessary campus approvals. The hives would be an educational hub for food and ecology groups on campus, would inlude an educational component, and create signage to connect the new hive location with the existing Haas pollinator garden.

Kingman Hall Creek Restoration

Kingman Hall and the Berkeley Student Cooperatives are seeking funding to restore the riparian cooridor within their house footprint. The upper portion of Strawberry Creek flows through Kingman Hall and there is a current creek bed failure that needs to be addressed. Funding would be used to hire two student leads, cover supplies of new plants and equipment, and the removal of trees to open up the canopy.