The Environmental Affairs Board of Associated Students had a great year for the 2013‐2014 school year.

As a broad reaching organization, EAB addresses many issues from Fossil Fuel Divestment to Sustainable Foods education. EAB engaged a wide range of students across many interest areas. It engaged students with their immediate surroundings and community through volunteer work in Isla Vista and the greater Santa Barbara area, while also involving students in matters on a state and national level, with trips to conferences such as Power Shift and the bi‐annual California State Sustainability Convergences to name a couple. EAB’s goal was to let students find their place in the organization by providing numerous opportunities for involvement at many different levels. Through these efforts it educated and empowered students so they are able to stand up for the environment, and continue the long legacy of sustainability and activism that lives on our campus. Below are detailed major accomplishments from our 2013‐2014 school year.

Campus Projects

Green Bill Certifications

EAB worked with PACES (Program for the Assessment and Certification for the Environment and Sustainability) to certify 3 BCCs, CAB, IVTU, and Coastal Fund, as sustainable organizations.

Each group is assessed based on office practices as well as a purchasing of food and swag for the organization. As part of these efforts, EAB hosted the first annual waste‐free All Hall Ball. More about the Green Bill? Click here.

Waste Bins

EAB provided funding to the AS Zero Waste Committee for the purchase of new waste bins for AS office spaces. The new bins are more uniform, have more comprehensive signage and increase the proper disposal of waste in the spaces they are being installed.

Drought Awareness Campaign

EAB worked to raise awareness across campus about the drought currently gripping California. Efforts included creating a fact sheet about where our water comes from, what the current levels are, and easy tips to help students cut their water use. EAB also collaborated with Housing and Residential Services to facilitate a residence hall wide water saving competition. EAB tabled to let residents know about the event, and created visuals to post around residence halls with information about how to conserve.

These initiatives included an Associated Students Fracking Resolution to go along with the successful countywide petition to get an initiative to ban fracking on the November ballot and a California wide call for a moratorium on fracking within the state. A resolution has been drafted to bring to ASUCSB senate to let Governor Brown know that the students of UCSB do not want fracking or other unconventional oil extraction techniques used in the state. The resolution went before the AS Senate.

Compostable Goods Program

In conjunction with Zero Waste Committee, EAB started a compostable plate and utensil service in AS allowing AS groups to easily purchase compostable goods at low prices on campus. This service is just one of many steps to make adherence to the Green Bill easier.

Bike Cart Beautification

Students painted EAB’s bike cart to promote its use. The bike cart is now more commonly used to transport tabling supplies and other materials for events as an alternative to motor‐driven vehicles. The bike cart can be checked out by anyone or any other organizations to transport their supplies around campus and Isla Vista.

Education and Awareness

Fossil Free Education Day

EAB organized an education day for students to come and learn about fossil fuel divestment and what that means in the UC system.

Sustainable Party/Event Planner

Lauren Dykman, a Green Bill consultant wrote a comprehensive guide to help AS groups abide by the Green Bill. It includes the names of companies endorsed by the green bill, as well as links to websites to order sustainable “swag”. It will be available online this summer.

Fossil Fuel Haunting

EAB held a day of action dressed as ghosts of a Fossil Future on Halloween to haunt the campus and warn of the terror ahead if the school keeps its ties to the fossil fuel industry. The action raised awareness about climate justice among peers and university administrators.

Urban Gardening Workshops

EAB hosted workshops for students to build their own container gardens. These workshops educated students about food deserts and gave them the resources to grow sustainable foods in their own dorms/apartments.

Food Deserts Workshop

Environmental Justice Chair Sukayna Ibrahim, along with one general member created and hosted a workshop at the S.C.O.R.E. (Student Commission on Racial Equality) Facing Race Conference to address and educate about the inaccessibility to fresh and healthy food in low income and communities of color. The workshop was followed by a discussion about addressing these issues.

EAB Abroad

Power Shift

EAB selected 15 lucky student leaders from various campus organizations to attend a four‐day Power Shift conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, after an application process open to the entire UCSB student population. Campus organizations represented by attendees included CalPIRG, Zero Waste Committee, Human Rights Board, AS Recycling and many more. Along with 6,000 other young activists from across the US, students attended workshops and keynote speeches including those given by Bill McKibben, 350.org founder, Tom Steyer, environmental philanthropist, and Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. The focus of Power Shift was the shifting of our reliance on dirty energy sources to cleaner alternatives and shifting power from corporations to citizens, while encouraging the intersectionality of issues within the youth climate movement. Students were exposed to new perspectives and networking opportunities with inspirational young people from the US and abroad. The conference attendance was made possible by generous contributions from CAB and Finance Board, as students were only responsible for the cost of food and public transportation in Pittsburgh, all other costs (airfare, lodging, registration) were covered so that the trip was an accessible opportunity for all students, regardless of income.

Fossil Fuel Divestment Convergence

EAB sent Kori Lay, Statewide Affairs Coordinator, to the Fossil Fuel Divestment Convergence in San Francisco to connect with students from across the country and learn from frontline community members and activists about fossil fuel divestment and how students can play a role in the fight for climate justice. More about the Fossil Fuel Divestment campaign? Click here.

California State Sustainability Convergence (CSSC): Humboldt

EAB sent five students from UCSB to CSU Humboldt for the California Student Sustainability Coalition’s Fall Convergence. It was an opportunity for students from all over the state to come together to learn and share ideas and strategies for creating sustainable communities.

Channel Islands Restoration Project on Anacapa Island

EAB co‐sponsored a group of 15 volunteers to do restoration work on Anacapa Island through Channel Islands Restoration. Restoration included planting native species, watering, caring for, and putting shade shields on new plants; and removing ice plant.

Political Action

Letters to President Obama Asking Him to Reject the Keystone XL Pipeline Project Proposal

EAB gathered a news article and 3 template letters and printed them out for EAB general members’ use by letter‐writing working groups. They also hosted three letter‐writing working groups, during which 9 UCSB students crafted hand‐written letters to President Obama! They then provided students with paper, pens, envelopes, President Obama’s address, and stamps.

Keystone XL Time Capsule

To continue to engage students about the Keystone XL Pipeline, we worked on a time capsule to capture the sentiments of students. This project was multimedia and invited general members to draw pictures, write letters and include anything they felt portrayed their feelings about Keystone XL and extraction methods. Over 15 general members contributed to the finished time capsule.

Vigil and March Against Keystone XL

Four EAB members participated in a vigil and march against Keystone XL in downtown Santa Barbara, in collaboration with 350.org Santa Barbara and other Santa Barbara county residents. The intention of this event was to promote awareness about Keystone XL and demonstrate peacefully how opposed Santa Barbara county residents are to Keystone XL. This event was part of a show of solidarity with other counties and states throughout the nation, occuring the same week as a mass student protest in Washington, DC at which over 400 students were arrested at the White House.

The Healthy Air and Water Initiative to Ban Fracking

In collaboration with the local group Santa Barbara County Water Guardians, members collected signatures for a petition to get an initiative to prevent the development of any new Hydraulic Fracturing, Acidizing or Cyclic Steam Injection wells in Santa Barbara County onto the November ballot. In the course of three weeks 20,000 signatures were gather from all across Santa Barbara County reaching numbers well above those needed for the initiative to be included.

Community Building & Enhancement

Mid‐year officer additions

EAB was required to add some new officers after the year was underway. They recruited Gabby Schaid and Katy Blackburn as Social Chairs and Jennifer Suh as Campus Affairs Coordinator. All of them were invaluable members of the EAB team.

Orfalea Children’s Center

EAB partnered with the UCSB’s Orfalea Children’s Center and the UCSB Greenhouse and Garden Project to teach preschool children hands on gardening classes. These classes taught basic gardening skills and sustainable food education to multiple classrooms. EAB volunteers helped lead the classes and enjoyed working with the children.

Earth Week

EAB worked with other organizations to provide an event every day for the entire week leading up to the IV Earth Day Festival. Each event was Dr. Seuss themed and was related to the environment in some way. A hike, Earth hour, documentary screenings, an adopt‐a‐block cleanup, and tree planting were among the week’s events.

Earth Hour

EAB hosted this as an event during Earth Week, where we encouraged the campus to turn off all or half of their lights for an hour, which was Wednesday of Earth Week at 7:00 PM. EAB members reached out to campus groups who meet on Wednesdays at 7:00 PM as well as to buildings and or rooms such as the MCC, residence halls, and the SRB and encouraged them to turn off their lights with them. EAB’s weekly general meeting was outdoors at Friendship court, where they  used no electricity and made announcements with posters rather than with their usual PowerPoint and projector.

IV Earth Day Festival

This event, hosted by EAB, took place on April 26th from 1‐7pm in People’s Park. The purpose of this event was to bring the community together to celebrate all that the Earth has done for us and to educate the community on how we can live more sustainably. The event included 30 vendors, 7 bands, yoga, face painting, dancing, screen printing, and much more. The event, as well as Earth Week, was Dr. Seuss themed, showing guests that no matter how old you are, you can still make a change.

SB Earth Day Festival

Students led a bike ride and bus ride to SB Earth Day in downtown Santa Barbara to get UCSB students involved. EAB had a booth at the festival at which they invited passersby to add to a paper mache globe made of re‐used scraps of paper on which passersby wrote what they love about the Earth. It was an opportunity to engage alumni and community members and educate them about EAB’s activities, campaigns, and opportunities.

Compostable Goods with the Residence Hall Association (RHA)

EAB provided compostable goods for the RHA’s All Hall Ball program, making the event zero waste for the first time. EAB is now working on getting the RHA it’s own store of compostable goods so future events can be zero waste as well.

Green Chef Cooking Competition

This is an EAB event where students get the opportunity to cook in a sustainable foods competition. The event has reached an attendance of over 150 students with 30 students volunteering to cook. Attendees were also given recipes for tasty sustainable meals. Green Chef promotes the use of local sustainable foods resources by students whenever possible.

Halloween and Deltopia Clean Up

EAB provided many volunteers during the weekends of Halloween and Deltopia to pick up trash from the streets of Isla Vista. Together with other volunteers, EAB got Isla Vista back to its usual cleanliness within one day.

Beach Clean Ups

EAB held multiple beach cleanups throughout the year to promote clean beaches, healthy marine wildlife, and clean waters.

Tree Planting at Lagoon

Volunteers worked in association with Goleta Valley Beautiful to plant three replacement Sycamore trees around the UCSB lagoon.

Trees for Veterans

Volunteers worked in association with Goleta Valley Beautiful to deliver six free fruit and shade trees to veterans in Goleta and Santa Barbara. Basic care for the trees was explained and a few were planted in veterans’ yards.

Tree Root Pruning

Volunteers worked in association with Goleta Valley Beautiful to conduct standard tree root pruning on 30 trees in the Devereux Nursery.

Outreach to Students

October Kick Off Meeting

EAB rented the Hub to host the first meeting of the year. Around 100 students came to enjoy free and local food from the Isla Vista Co‐Op and to learn about EAB and its goals for the year.

Environmental Justice Mixer

The Environmental Justice mixer promoted the communication and collaboration between student organizations addressing environmental and social justice issues. The event highlighted the intersectionalities between the social justice and environmental movement. Leaders from a number of different campus groups were brought together along with interested students and a couple of older Isla Vista community members.

Reimagining Climate Justice Conference

In May EAB provided funding for a conference hosted by the International Institute for Climate Action and Theory. The group is comprised of UCSB faculty and graduate and undergraduate students. The conference helped disseminate information collected by a research group that attended the COP 19 Climate Change Conference in Warsaw, Poland.

CSSC at UCSB: Coalitions, Connections for Change

Nine students organized the California Student Sustainability Coalition’s Spring Convergence at UCSB. Over 400 people were in attendance from across the state. Students produced the three day event filled with keynote speakers, student led workshops, and panelists from across the country to talk about creating coalitions and promoting sustainability.

EAB’s Committees and Working Groups

● Fossil Free UC

● CSSC Planning

● Drought Awareness

● Green Bill

● Powershift Planning

● Letter Writing to Obama

● Earth Day Planning

● Keystone XL Time Capsule

● Environmental Justice Mixer

● Oil Well Stimulation: Fracking, Acidization, Cyclic Steam Injection

● Bike Cart Beautification

Officers