The University of California, Santa Barbara has taken major steps towards integrating sustainability into the educational experience. UCSB has one of the oldest Environmental Studies Programs in the country www.es.ucsb.edu founded in the fall of 1970 and built the first LEED Platinum Laboratory building in the world with the construction of Bren Hall and founding of the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management www.bren.ucsb.edu in 2002.

UCSB undertook to organize a plan to assure campus sustainability based on The Natural Step Process with the assistance of Brightworks Northwest in 2004. The Natural Step wwww.naturalstep.org framework was developed in Sweden and offers an approach to sustainability that has been successfully used in a number of west coast communities, including Santa Monica, Portland and Whistler, BC.

MRL is a committed participant in the UCSB Sustainability Program. Staff and students in our facility are encouraged to become aware of very basic ways in which they may personally contribute to the objective of our department and the university community to conserve valuable resources in the areas of energy, water, land, air, recycling, commuting, and purchasing.

An informative presentation is available at this link that will introduce UCSB sustainability concepts and objectives. The official UCSB Sustainability Website is an excellent source of current information.