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Talking Louder About Sustainability

UC Berkeley is Talking Louder about Sustainability.

Talking Louder is the Office of Sustainability’s communications and outreach initiative. Through a boisterous communications campaign, the Office and our team of students are raising awareness and engaging thousands of faculty, staff, and students in efforts to reduce campus environmental impacts – including those related to electricity and water use, transportation choices, waste and recycling, food, and purchasing.

Expanding the culture of sustainability at UC Berkeley means:

  • Making campus sustainability information easily available
  • Educating the UC Berkeley community about what steps they can take, why they work, as well as what efforts are less effective
  • Empowering the UC Berkeley community to apply sustainability principles at work/school and home
  • Increasing the number of people and groups who are sharing their sustainability lessons learned, best practices, and tools with others
  • Expanding the roster of champions & partners who are involved in sustainability.
The Office’s Talking Louder efforts are generously supported by The Green Initiative Fund (TGIF).

Talking Louder (and doing more) This Year

This year we are adding depth to our campaign through a teaching, learning, and change module that includes in-depth staff training, job shadowing opportunities, and student multi-media communications production for the web. See some of our newest efforts:

Showcasing Sustainability through Multimedia

Teams of students are utilizing multimedia to spread the message of sustainability on campus. These slideshows, informative shorts, music videos, etc. will serve as tools to expand interest in sustainability by showcasing what has been done and what more there is to do.View Our Multimedia Productions

New Campus Sustainability Walking Tour

Want to see campus sustainability for yourself? Appreciate all of the hard work in action by partaking in a self-guided one-hour tour of campus sustainability features. The Office of Sustainability has produced an info-sheet, map, and legend based on original walking tours provided by Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Sustainability (CACS).

Download the most up-to-date version of the self-guided walking tour map:

Promoting Sustainable Behavior – a guide to successful communication

Have you ever found it challenging to persuade your best friend to shut down their computer at night? Have you ever felt exasperated by your colleague’s unwillingness to recycle? You are not alone. Promoting sustainable behavior is not easy. Fortunately, social scientists have developed an understanding of what it takes to make people change their habits. Check out this new primer - Promoting Sustainable Behavior, a guide to successful communication.

2009-2010 Talking Louder Results

With the help of a comprehensive marketing-communication plan developed by a MBA graduate student, a student webmaster redesigning websites, and three student outreach associates taking the message out far and wide, the campaign brought these results:

  • Expanded the coverage and frequency of Bright Green News – the campus sustainability newsletter. The number of articles per issue doubled and the newsletter went from a bi-monthly to monthly publication.
  • Bright Green News readership increased from a subscription base of 400 to 1,400 as a result of the campaign, representing a 250% increase in readership
  • Completed an extensive redesign of the main campus sustainability website, and its companion sites.
  • Created a Facebook page to interactively engage the campus on sustainability. Friends of the page grew from 1 to 200 in a matter of months.
  • Offered two student sustainability forums each semester. Attendance at student forums grew over 400% (from 20 to 100 attendees).
  • Through face to face contact by attending events, holding forums, providing campus sustainability tours, tabling at residence halls, and presenting to staff groups, several thousand students and hundreds of employees learned more about campus sustainability.