University of California, Davis
EN-5: Outreach Campaign

During Winter Quarter of 2018, the campus participated in the Recyclemania Challenge, an 8-weeklong challenge to help reduce waste on campus, increase recycling, and benchmark against other schools across the country. The Office of Sustainability held a Recyclemania workshop to kick off the competition and show attendees how to recycle and reduce waste, posted a waste-related story on the campus Snapchat account as well as the Sustainability Facebook account, and tabled during lunchtime with prizes on the quad, a high-traffic area for students, staff and faculty. These efforts targeted the entire campus community.

In addition, Student Housing and Dining Services provided focused efforts to promote Recyclemania to its student residents through social media and tabling efforts in the Dining Commons. Throughout the campaign, the campus submitted weekly waste data to Recyclemania to track impact and efforts and shared these campus numbers on social media.

From Week 1 of the 2018 Recyclemania Challenge until Week 8 when it ended, the campus reduced waste by 11%, from almost 112 tons landfilled to less than 100 tons.

In addition, the waste-related story posted on the campus Snapchat resulted in 1,213 unique viewers, with 6 screen shots, two clicks to Facebook, and 6 clicks to the zero waste website.

Student Housing and Dining Services facilitates an annual energy and water conservation competition in partnership with UC Davis Facilities Energy & Engineering every winter quarter. It is a six week long competition between residence halls teams to see which residence hall can save the most energy and water over the course of the competition. The teams are ranked on an online leaderboard based on how much energy and water they are saving each week. The leaderboard shows team rankings, daily energy and water consumption data, and comparison units to number of light bulbs left on and number of showers avoided. Residences are educated on actions they can take to save energy and water in their residence hall. The team(s) with the most energy and/or water savings are recognized for their efforts and have an energy or water trophy displayed in their Dining Commons for a week.

The Sustainability Peer Education student staff members support engagement during the competition through tabling in the Dining Commons, communications on social media, sustainability and nutrition newsletter, and bulletin boards, and workshops in the residence halls. Resident Advisors encourage their residents to save energy and water, and provide weekly team ranking updates and a conservation tip at their weekly RA staff meetings. Participation is also encouraged through a weekly raffle for sustainability swag.

kWh of energy and gallons of water saved are tracked throughout the competition. A feedback survey to participants after the competition show that residents enjoy participating in the challenge, and made them more aware of personal energy and water consumption.

Student in the residence halls are encouraged to take shorter showers, turn off lights when not in a room, unplug plugs when not in use and devices including microwaves, and dry clothes on lower heat. At the end the goal is to teach students about using less energy and water as possible then they are able to see how much is wasted and become more aware and save energy and water.

During the final week of the Energy and Water Challenge in 2020, one team reduced energy usage by nearly 4% compared to the previous two weeks.

Combined, the eight participating teams reduced energy usage by 5,022 kWh.

Additional Campus-Wide Campaigns:

Cool Campus Challenge

In April of 2019 the University of California launched the Cool Campus Challenge, an online competition between all ten campuses to engage students, faculty, and staff in the UC Carbon Neutrality initiative. (Note: An earlier version of the challenge initially targeted employees to engage and foster sustainable employee actions towards reduced greenhouse gas emissions around mostly energy and transportation related behaviors.) The 2019 challenge was designed to educate and motivate the University of California campus community to take simple energy-saving, waste reducing and sustainability-focused actions to lower their carbon footprint and help the UC system reach carbon neutrality by 2025.

Participants in the Challenge signed into an online tool where they took a carbon-footprint calculator, and completed actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at home and on campus. Participants earned points for pledging to take actions within the tool and for verifying the action. Bonus points were earned for sharing pictures of users completing the action. Systemwide awards were given for the top point earning campus, the Health System with most points, and the campus with the greatest percent of its population participating.

The Challenge was built around principles of community based social marketing, utilizing social networks and gamification to encourage participation. It was designed to engage the broader university community in achieving the University’s goal of being carbon neutral by 2025, and to generate lasting behavior shifts that create a culture of sustainability on our campuses. The challenge included almost 70 different pledges, targeting actions anyone can take on an everyday basis to reduce their energy and carbon footprint from lighting, computer use, purchasing, heating and cooling, food and waste, education, and transportation.

The following are some results from the challenge:

-Over 22,000 faculty, staff, and students participated in the challenge. That’s 7.6% of the entire system-wide population.
-Compared to the inaugural Cool Campus Challenge in 2015, participation increased 16% despite the fact that the length of the campaign decreased 60% (from 10 weeks to 4 weeks).
-Participants acknowledged and nominated the environmental efforts of 763 Climate Heroes
-Participants completed nearly 204,000 actions
-Participants reduced 10,220 metric tons CO2e in self-reported actions, equivalent to taking 2,170 cars off the road for a year

At UC Davis, more than 1,500 students, staff or faculty participated in the challenge, taking 15,551 actions that totaled CO2 reductions of 1,765,198 pounds.

Aggie Green Pledge

Aggie Green Pledge is a program designed to encourage sustainable actions on campus. Currently there are pledges in five categories: waste, energy, commute, food, and water. Each category has three different suggested pledges, which participants can choose to do. Participants can take a pledge at each Aggie Green Pledge event (during the campus farmers’ markets and at staff events such as new orientation and staff appreciation). This campaign is intended to encourage individual behavior change (e.g. learning to sort, eating less meat, taking public transportation, reporting water leaks on campus to facilities) through direct engagement and incentives; each time participants make a pledge they get a button for that pledge category. After three categories they get a mason jar mug from the Office of Sustainability. After they've made a pledge in all five categories they receive a Sustainability branded reusable bag. In 2019, there were 82 participants that took an Aggie Green Pledge. Since Aggie Green Pledge program was started, there have been 2,395 participants overall.

Game Day Recycling Challenge

The campus participates annually in the GameDay Recycling Challenge, a nationwide competition among universities to reduce and recycle waste generated at home football games. In the 2019 GameDay Recycling Challenge, the UC Davis Health Stadium created 0.191 pounds of waste generated per person, a decrease from the 2018 numbers at 0.198 pounds of waste generated per person. In addition, the diversion rate from 2019 was 62%, an increase from the 2018 diversion rate of 48%.

#MyLastTrash Campaign

Student Housing and Dining Services and the Office of Sustainability coordinated 5 initiatives focusing on specific waste items and encouraged all campus users to shift to reusable items instead of choosing single-use items: cups, bags, straws, napkins, and utensils. Participants take a pledge to use reusable items, and are provided with that specific reusable item. Each campaign also includes communications such as emails, LCD screens throughout campus, napkin holder advertisements in the Dining facilities, and bulletin board content. Several events were coordinated to engage the campus, including a film screening and panel discussion for the documentary STRAWs, a zero waste shopping workshop where participants decorated reusable tote bags, and dining commons tabling activities.

Across the 5 My Last Trash campaigns, more than 3,300 reusable items (cups, utensil kits, straws, napkins, and bags) were distributed. There were 551 interactions at DC tabling, and 169 attendees at programs associated with these campaigns. 513 pledges taken: 320 Residence Hall students, 122 students living off campus, 18 staff, 1 faculty member.

Trim the Waste

Trim the Waste is an online educational program where students, staff, and faculty at UC Davis can learn about campus energy, how buildings use energy, and how they can participate in energy saving projects on campus. There are 5 levels in the program, with the first 4 serving as educational and training materials that teach participants how to find energy waste in their building.  The target audience is all students, staff, and faculty on the main UC Davis campus. Since the launch of the program in mid 2017, 847 participants have completed the program.

Additional Employee Outreach Campaigns:

Back of the House Waste Audits

One time each month, two student Waste Reduction Coordinators from Student Housing and Dining Services visit three Dining Commons and two retail hubs (Scrubs, Silo) to check the waste stream diversion in each unit. Units are not warned in advance. The students check through the compost, recycling and waste receptacles in each production area, as well as look as much as safely possible into dumpsters and compactors, to determine whether the production teams in each unit are properly sorting their waste. They are also checking to make sure that units are using the proper disposable materials to minimize waste and that all waste education/signage is correct in the units. If the student coordinators find any misplaced waste, they discuss with the staff on duty to foster proper waste diversion understanding. Each unit receives a score based on a scale of 1-10, and the winning retail and resident dining units receive a trophy each month. At the end of the year, the unit with the most trophies wins a grand prize. Each year, the units’ waste diversion accuracy increases from the beginning of fall quarter, demonstrated by improved scores during the audits in each unit. This is also demonstrated by seeing consistently positive results in the waste diversion overall as well as positive feedback from the services that process this waste.

Sustainability Talks

Sustainability Talks are biweekly newsletters distributed to the Directors of each Student Housing and Dining Services unit to go over with their teams during “team huddles” before each meal period. The focus rotates; this quarter was waste reduction, including topics such as “Just Ask” and “How to Sort your Waste,” which seek to build knowledge among Student Housing and Dining Services staff on waste reduction programs. These Sustainability Talks are also intended to educate staff on sustainable food issues outside of the immediate campus, such as how a Biodigester works, and information on the local farms that the campus works with. Buttons were distributed buttons for staff to wear along with the most recent Waste Talk to encourage a program called “Just Ask” encouraging increased communication between students and front-line staff to customize dishes and limit post-consumer food waste. The Directors’ and staff support of this Waste Talk could be seen by the number of staff wearing the buttons and supporting the program.

For more information, visit the following links:

Recyclemania: https://recyclemania.org/

Energy and Water Challenge leaderboard: https://ceed.ucdavis.edu/ewc
Energy and Water Challenge: https://housing.ucdavis.edu/sustainability/energy-water-challenge/

Cool Campus Challenge: https://www.coolcampuschallenge.org/

Aggie Green Pledge: https://sustainability.ucdavis.edu/action/pledge/index.html

GameDay Recycling Challenge: https://recyclemania.org/participate/gameday-recycling-challenge/

Trim the Waste: https://www.trimthewaste.ucdavis.edu/