An estimated 70 billion pounds of food is wasted in the U.S. each year, yet recent statistics show that 42.2 million Americans live in food insecure households, including 13.1 million children. So how do we get nutritious food that would go into the trash to individuals and families who need it most? The answer is food sustainability, which was the center of one of the dynamic Earth Month events held on campus April 18.
Zero waste by 2020—that’s one of the goals of the UC Office of the President’s Sustainability Practices Policy for all UC campuses. Several students at UC San Diego’s Student Sustainability Collective (SSC) are working to make that a reality.
On April 22, tens of thousands of people around the world — scientists and non-scientists alike — marched through the streets of Washington, D.C., San Diego and more than 600 other cities to celebrate science and encourage environmental protection, science literacy, evidenced-based policies and strong federal research funding. Hundreds of UC San Diego community members took part around the world, some even “marching” underwater and on a research vessel off the coast of San Diego.
UC San Diego announced its first eight proof-of-concept awards to advance university inventions to commercial impact. Funded through the new “Accelerating Innovations to Market (AIM)” program, these milestone-driven projects are designed to de-risk early-stage technologies.
Biologists at UC San Diego have provided the first evidence that a widely used pesticide can significantly impair the ability of otherwise healthy honey bees to fly. The study, which employed a specially constructed bee “flight mill,” raises concerns about how pesticides affect the honey bees’ capacity to pollinate and long-term effects on the health of honey bee colonies.