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. 

ASUC Sustainable Campus Food System Designathon

Project Description

This designathon aims to empower students to share their voices on decisions about the campus food system, because it should be catered to their needs and values. The Pour Out Pepsi campaign pressures the UC Berkeley administration to end the exclusive pouring rights contract with PepsiCo due to its unsustainable and inequitable practices. There are currently discussions in the UCOP about establishing a UC system-wide exclusive pouring rights contract, likely with PepsiCo or Coca-Cola, demonstrating that they value profit over students. The food and beverage...

High-Output Parallel Biodiesel Processing System (HOPBPS)

The Biofuels Technology Club (BTC) at UC Berkeley's College of Chemistry has a clear mission: to achieve a zero-waste campus by producing biodiesel from campus dining hall waste cooking oil. Since its founding in 2015, the club has successfully produced over 500 gallons of high-quality biodiesel, which has been tested extensively in the lab and for 12,000 miles in a car. The club's ultimate goal is to power the UC Berkeley campus fleets, closing an important loop within the school's consumption and waste streams. However, the club's current processing setup has limited capacity, preventing it from producing the significant quantities of biodiesel needed to achieve its goal.

Building Student Capacity at the UC Gill Tract Community Farm

Project Description

“Building Student Capacity at the UC Gill Tract Community Farm'' is a partnership between the UC Gill Tract Community Farm and the Food Institute Graduate Council. The project will establish an undergraduate internship program facilitated by graduate students and Gill Tract Farmers to increase campus engagement with the Farm. The project will strengthen the UC Berkeley community's role in the local food system as both contributors to urban farming and consumers of local food by promoting volunteering at the Farm and utilizing the Farm's farm stand. Building...

Vermicomposting Implementation Project

Project Description

The Vermicompost Implementation Project heightens the impact of our existing Continuous-Flow-Through Vermicomposting Bin by unifying our material flows and expanding our educational offerings. First, we will relocate our Bin to the Clark Kerr Campus (CKC) Garden, where we will continue processing CKC Kitchen food waste and producing nutrient-rich vermicast to benefit the CKC Garden. By tightening our project’s geographic scope we will become a clear educational example of organics resource circularity. Second, this new location will form the foundation of...

EH&S Strawberry Creek Hydrologic Monitoring Initiative

Project Description

By building upon UCB’s watershed monitoring efforts, we aim to raise awareness of aquatic ecosystem health, enhance accessibility to creek sensor data, and expand UCB’s creek monitoring capabilities. Our focus is to create a surface water monitoring platform that provides access to current and historical surface water monitoring for Strawberry Creek. Our deliverables include an open source web app that enables users to download all available Strawberry Creek surface water monitoring data, graphical data summaries, and text message alerts based on fluctuations in...

Queer Indigenous Speaker Series

Project Description

Over the 2024-2025 academic year, the Queer Indigenous Speakers Series will explore the intersection of indigeneity and queerness to challenge and expand our concepts around activism, sustainability, identity, and sovereignty. Through a series of talks and workshops, indigenous activists and scholars from the Bay Area and beyond will work with students to explore the historical constructions of our current conceptions around selfhood and nature, and understand how these seemingly disparate categories might be more closely entwined than we think. Ultimately, this...

Sustainable Menstrual Products Program (SMPP)

Project Description

The Zero Waste Coalition (ZWC) is seeking funding to expand their research from the initial pilot in Fall 2023, providing free access to eco-friendly, body-safe period products in the University Health Services wellness area and at community events. ZWC will hold best practices and care workshops, community events, and conduct outreach efforts to educate the UC Berkeley campus around the intersectional issues around environmental justice and menstrual equity.

Project Links

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BSC Garden Revitalization Plan

Project Description

The Berkeley Student Cooperatives (BSC) Garden Revitalization Plan seeks to materially support and educationally empower BSC’s student Garden Managers in stewarding over two acres of urban forest, vegetable gardens and backyard spaces enjoyed by 1,200+ BSC student residents. In order to cultivate native biodiversity, food sovereignty and build community, a "Garden Manager Hub'' including a greenhouse, seed library, and landscape materials center will be collectively constructed. Agency over plant procurement methods will remove major barriers to achieving Garden...

Building Diverse Coalitions for a Just Energy Transition: BERC 2025 Energy Summit and Case Competition

Project Description

The Energy Summit, held each spring, is the Berkeley Energy and Resources Collaborative’s (BERC’s) flagship event, a conference that for nearly 20 years has fostered dialogue and collaboration among students and professionals advancing the clean energy transition. The 2025 Summit – entitled “Building Diverse Coalitions for a Just Energy Transition” – will feature panels with experts from government, private sector, and advocacy groups; an expo for graduate students’ climate research; a career fair with private, public, and non-profit organizations; and workshops...

Farm to Fork: Creating a Circular Food System at UC Berkeley

Project Description

To develop a circular food system and advance internal sustainable procurement goals within Berkeley Dining, the Housing and Dining Sustainability (H&DS) Office is partnering with Berkeley Student Farms to procure local, organic produce, grown at Oxford Tract, for Berkeley Dining restaurants. The Oxford Tract is an on-campus farm managed by UC Berkeley’s College of Natural Resources. H&DS strives to pioneer a hyperlocal, circular food system in campus procurement by incorporating produce grown on-site. This furthers our sustainable procurement goal to...