Make sure you check it out next time you’re in the Nest!

They invite you to join them in celebrating their beautiful space through an evening of free food, activities, music, and all-round good vibes! There’ll be salad and dressing making with vegetables that you get to harvest yourself from their garden, bouquet making with fresh cut flowers, a photo booth and contest, their own market stand selling heavily discounted produce, and much more! All are welcome to attend so please share and invite friends, family, and anyone you know!

For more details and updates, please see their Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/216008355459445/

So come help them kick off the summer and growing season by coming up to the 4th floor of the AMS Student Nest where their rooftop garden is situated! See you June 24th

Do you want to have a say in where your money is going? Are you curious about what projects are being funded by the SPF? Do you want experience sitting on an AMS committee? Then this position is for you!

Position Description: Your attendance is required at monthly meetings from June 2016-April 2017 (time of meetings determined by member availability) to vote on whether funding should be granted to projects that have applied.

Please apply by sending your resume and a cover letter stating why you want to sit on the SPF Committee to [email protected] before 5pm on Wednesday, June 22nd.

Learn to love your commute and enjoy the fresh air by biking to work!

HUB’s Bike to Work Week is providing a communal effort to significantly reduce transportation emissions while burning calories at the same time. Register on Bike Hub for free to be eligible to win one of 5 new bikes, or a trip to Amsterdam, courtesy of KLM.

Visit over 60 celebration stations for free coffee, snacks, route maps, and tune-ups, all across Metro Vancouver!

At the beginning of the year, we held a track day for the team to learn more about the cars as well as seeing them in action. The team booked a nearby lot to take the cars for a spin on a sunny Vancouver day. We were able to showcase our running cars to our new members on this day and explain components of the car before they were taken apart for a rebuild. This way, students were able to witness the holistic design of the car and see what it looks like in action. It was also heartening for returning members to see the fruits of their labor coming to life. Many don’t have the chance to go to the competition in Detroit and have never seen the cars actually operate.Track day also provided a low-pressure chance for new students to try giving our prototype car a drive.

Since that day, our team has been busy with training new members, participating in public outreach events and fabrication. Our new foam molds arrived this last week for our new aerodynamic urban shell so our team is currently busy doing composite layups.

In the pursuit for maximum fuel efficiency, our cars have undergone several improvements to become top contenders at the Shell Eco-Marathon Competition and SAE Supermileage Competition. After having to rebuild two cars from scratch due to a serious accident in 2014, this year our team focused on redesigns of existing components with the hopes of obtaining higher fuel mileage. Such improvements included the redesign of one of our vehicles’ shell, designing a telemetry system to relay information about the car to the driver and team base, upgrading the bearings in our wheel hubs, and modifying a new engine for one of our vehicles. The telemetry system will provide us with the information we need to drive as efficiently as possible, while the new modified engine will provide more power with higher fuel efficiency. The new shell is more streamlined with a 60% reduction in drag, allowing for better fuel efficiency, and better bearings reduce losses due to friction.

Progress on both cars is going great and we look forward to running cars in the coming month!

We will be organizing a formal car unveiling event in a few weeks to showcase the technologies of our vehicle and raise awareness on the need for sustainable transportation.

More updates on that to come!

You can find out more about our team and our vision by checking out our new YouTube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywox86oNKv4

And support us by liking our facebook page

https://www.facebook.com/ubcst/?fref=ts

Edible insects, a delicious and nutritious superfood, are becoming a lot more popular in Western cultures. Many species can be farmed with much less land, water and feed compared to other larger livestock (e.g. cows) and they emit minimal greenhouse gases. Raising grasshoppers in colder climates is usually done in climate-controlled areas indoors with the highest inputs being heat, fresh water and feed. The main purpose of this experimental project was to reduce these inputs by raising a native grasshopper species outdoors during the summer. This project showed that this method can be used to reduce inputs required to raise them indoors, however, more research would be needed to develop the best techniques to do so. Grass was grown inside their enclosure, which provided sufficient water and feed. The project was done during the summer taking advantage of the higher temperatures. The enclosure was build with materials purchased from the AMS sustainability fund.

In the second part of the project, we collaborated with Sprouts to put on an edible insects themed event. There was a very big turn out and a lot of interest. The grasshopper project was explained and there was a discussion about edible insects with insect food samples provided for everyone. The event was a huge success!

If you would like to learn more about the project or edible insects in general visit www.bonbug.com .

Blog post written by Dominique Goulet

Even in this time of exciting transformation, the UBC Formula Electric team has been hard at work: the battery upgrade project is nearing completion! We have assembled the box and batteries and installed our custom busbars. Enjoy the teaser image of the project above. More details to follow soon. The electricity and excitement are flowing!

The Microtopia Documentary Screening and Panel Discussion was a success, despite the fewer number of attendees than expected. 135 people had registered on Eventbrite, but only ~100 showed up. The event involved a 55 minute documentary screening on Microtopia, which follows a number of case studies on micro-living across the world. The panel discussion surrounded micro living in Vancouver in terms of sustainability, affordability, and practicality.

The Sustainability Networking Event was a Thrive week initiative by two Sustainability
Ambassadors, Soohyun Kim and Ayumi Imaizumi. The event was held in BC Hydro Theater in
CIRS building from 12:00pm to 1:30pm and included a free hot lunch. It was open to students,
faculty and community members whom were already deeply involved in sustainability initiatives
on campus or whom were simply interested in learning more about the concept of sustainability.The event increased the awareness of UBC’s sustainable initiatives to the attendees and provided a platform for them to network with each other for future collaboration.

The event started off with a bingo icebreaker,where attendees were asked to talk to, and find
other attendees with the characteristics described in each of the bingo slots. The bingo sheet
was made relevant to sustainability so that attendees could ease into starting a conversation
with each other and start networking. The attendees were also asked to brainstorm the two
topics, “How can we create more sustainability engagement on campus?” and “How does
sustainability relate to your courses?”.

Some of the answers that were brought up by the students when asked the above questions
were to:

The event was a huge success as attendees were able to improve their understanding of
sustainability on campus and how they can together make a difference for the UBC student
body. We hope to make this an annual event that would lead to greater collaboration amongst
the UBC community for sustainable initiatives on and off campus.
If you would like to learn more about the Sustainability Ambassador’s events for the upcoming
year, please visit the following page: https://sustain.ubc.ca/ambassadors .