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UC San Diego’s Celebration of Earth Week: April 20 - 24

Beginning April 20, UC San Diego will join communities around the world in celebrating Earth Week. For our campus, this is an opportunity for us to both celebrate our achievements in environmental sustainability and demonstrate our commitment to making our planet healthier for future generations.

The week-long series of Earth Week events, planned by our dedicated students and staff, includes a campus cleanup, Earth Day fair, walking tour of campus sustainability initiatives and more. To view a complete schedule of activities, visit earthweek.ucsd.edu.

This year’s Earth Day celebration includes an important call to action: conserving water. Our state is experiencing the worst drought on record in its history and our Governor has called for 25% reductions in water use. We have already taken many actions through our campus operations to conserve water – from installing approximately 9,000 feet of pipeline to use reclaimed water in our cogeneration plant’s cooling towers (saving 300,000 gallons of potable water per day) to converting 128,000 square feet of turf to low/no-water use landscape using drought-tolerant plants and groundcover.

Sustainability is an integral part of UC San Diego’s education, research and campus operations. We have long had ambitious water-saving goals. Now, we need your help to take even greater action to reduce water consumption to the greatest extent possible. Visit sustainability.ucsd.edu for more information.

In order to allow employees the opportunity to participate in an Earth Week activity, one hour of administrative leave with pay has been approved. All managers and supervisors are encouraged to allow employees to attend, as long as the absence does not infringe upon the performance of required job duties.

Pradeep K. Khosla Chancellor Gary C. Matthews Vice Chancellor – Resource Management and Planning