Thank you to everyone who came out to our 22nd annual Earth Summit and participated in the No Time to Waste Scavenger Hunt! Congratulations to McKenna Berry for winning the $500 REI gift card! If you are interested in checking out all the submissions, you can find them in our submission gallary located on the ESLP website. Huge shout out to our donors: New Leaf, Go Ask Alice, Verve, Petroglyph, Sockshop Santa Cruz, REI Co-op, and Epicenter Cycling for their contributions to our NTTW Scavenger hunt! Stay tuned for updates on our No Time to Waste campaign progress coming in summer.

Thank you to everyone who came out and voted in the 2022 Campus elections!

Our Earth Summit theme this year, “No Time To Waste”, focused on education and political engagement. Enviroslug submitted an opinion poll for the 20202 UCSC campus elections to gain a better understanding of where students stand on the issue of Zero Waste. We asked 2 questions:

Should UCSC stop purchasing products that end up in landfills?

Should students have a say in future sustainability plans?

Students responded with a resounding YES to both questions, not only supporting the movement for a Zero Waste campus, but also starting critical conversations around the importance of including student voices in sustainability initiatives on campus.

As a part of the 2020 Earth Summit: Our Time Is Now, a podcast entitled “Enviroslug Radio” was created by a few Enviroslug members to discuss sustainability and the environment, and how those issues affect the students of UC Santa Cruz and the surrounding Santa Cruz County. 

The first episode, released June 5, 2020, highlighted farmworker exploitation and the power of a union amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Hosts Bijan, Chelsea, James, and Neil sat down with Sarbjit Sangha, a United Farm Workers representative and leader among Punjabi farmworkers at Monterey Mushrooms, a fresh mushroom company in Morgan Hill, California, to talk about the protections and benefits his union provides.

Thank you to everyone who attended Earth Summit 2019!

Our theme this year, “Just Sustainability: Intersecting Narratives of Hope”, brought a lot of amazing conversation about how to confront hidden privileges within sustainability. Our wonderful speakers addressed the important topic of environmental justice, and the Students of Color Caucus offered a collaborative workshop for students to discuss how they view privileges in a sustainability framework.

We are proud to have hosted a variety of organizations while they tabled at the event including: The Homeless Garden Project, Fossil Free UC, The Common Ground Center, The Fair Trade Alliance, and more!

Special thanks to Falafel of Santa Cruz for providing us with dinner, our speakers for giving us their valuable time, and all the attendees for making this event such a success.

A HUGE THANK YOU TO EVERYONE THAT ATTENDED AND A SPECIAL THANK YOU TO OUR AMAZING PRESENTERS!

This year's Earth Summit focused on the current crisis at UCSC in which students are being forced to fight for their basic rights. Earth Summit was an opportunity for students, alum, faculty, and community members alike to come learn how the current enrollment crisis at UCSC has permeated every aspect of students' lives and what folks can do to get involved in the movement to fight it. Speakers and workshops helped give attendees methods of enacting change on and off of campus.

At this year's summit...

Amah Mutsun Tribal Band Leader, Valentin Lopez spoke on the history of the land UCSC is on and helped the SEC reveal the Mission Bell petition we worked with the Amah Mutsun to create.

Students learned about food and housing justice on campus from members of SUHWG.

Attendees participate in our direct action station where they could sign petitions, register to vote, and comment on the Student Housing West environmental impact report.

We also be featured our 4th Annual Student of Color Caucus and Whiteness in Sustainability workshop in order to engage in the conversation about racism within the sustainability movement and on campus.

Students, faculty, and community members gathered to discuss campus sustainability and students' basic needs.