UC Santa Barbara's The Green Initiative Fund (TGIF) Grant Making Committee has announced its grant recipients for the 2009-10 funding cycle.
The committee, composed primarily of undergraduate and graduate students, received 27 applications for various campus sustainability projects from UCSB students, staff, and faculty. In the end, 13 projects were selected to receive funding.
"Since joining The Green Initiative Fund as its undergraduate representative in 2007, I have seen a tremendous number of high-quality project proposals," said Brian Starr, TGIF committee chair and senior business economics major. "In fact, the overall quality of the projects has consistently increased each year."
An increase in the number of high-quality projects makes the TGIF Committee's job more challenging, Starr added. "This year's selection process was extremely difficult since we felt every proposal would have positively impacted the campus in some way," he said.
Some examples of the TGIF-funded projects:
Plastic Bottle Reduction Project will install a filtered water spigot in the Arbor Store to encourage reusable water bottle use on campus, $2,450.
Hatlen LED Stage Light Project will replace two rows of traditional 1,000-watt stage lights with 116-watt LED stage lights, significantly reducing electricity used and heat generated, $22,800.
Multiple Building Waste Audits will allow a student group to sort and document the waste stream in 10 campus buildings as part of the process of fulfilling requirements for LEED certification, $10,200.
Wind Turbine Project will install the first UCSB wind turbine to power the White Mountain Research Station, $18,500.
Other TGIF-funded projects are Utility Conservation Incentive Program, $4,138; Water Conservation Initiative, $4,138; Energy Efficient Hand Dryers, $4,756; Energy Efficient Exercise Equipment, $6,500; Sustainable Laboratory Competition, $12,780; High Speed Electrical Vehicle Charging Station, $16,000; Harder Stadium Bathroom Fixtures Retrofit, $17,936; Student Resources Building Energy Visualization, $20,000; and Photovoltaic Panels at the Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Laboratory, $20,000.
TGIF will begin soliciting applications for the 2010-11 funding cycle in fall 2010. Anyone who has an idea for a project that would aid UCSB's sustainability efforts is urged to contact Jill Richardson, campus sustainability coordinator, at (805) 893-8367, or by e-mail at jill.richardson@vcadmin.ucsb.edu.
The TGIF Committee is a student-majority governing body selected to oversee TGIF allocation of approximately $150,000 annually. The fund was created in 2006 when the UCSB student body overwhelmingly voted for a $2.60 per quarter lock-in fee. The money created by the lock-in fee is used to finance sustainability projects that help reduce UCSB's impact on the environment.
For more information on TGIF, please visit http://sustainability.ucsb.edu/tgif.
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