Santa Clara University
IN-47: Innovation A

In 2019, SCU launched a Sustainability Strategic Plan which builds upon past climate action plans and propels us forward with solutions that require the campus to innovate (while not creating vastly more work) and to feel capable to enact change. The Center for Sustainability's vision was to co-create a plan with key stakeholders across the university and to equally emphasize interactive components so that our campus community could partake in actions that directly contribute to the Plan’s outlined goals and objectives.

A suite of components make up this engaging and “digestible” plan:
1) an engaging overview video
2) an online brief booklet with goals and objectives
3) an implementation roadmap -- strategies have descriptors such as category, responsible party, fiscal year, and UN SDGs,
4) a public dashboard with key performance indicators for tracking progress and milestones
5) “Playbooks” that display bite-sized actions for individuals to implement the Plan based on their role on campus and,
6) a badge-award system designed with community-based social marketing principles to incentivize and reward individual behavior change and action.
Visit http://www.scu.edu/missionsustainable to see all of the above.

Playbooks (https://www.scu.edu/sustainability/commitment/strategicplan/playbooks/) are simple online pages that display bite-sized actions for individuals to implement the Plan based on their role on campus. In tandem with the Playbooks is a badge-award system designed with community-based social marketing principles to incentivize and reward individual behavior change and action.

Some examples of actions identified in our Sustainability Playbooks:
Faculty:
- Academics: Incorporate an activity integrating environmental, social, and economic aspects into your course
- Transportation: Consider switching to a hybrid or electric vehicle and utilize SCU discounts scu.edu/sustainability/operations/purchasing/
- Waste: Utilize Camino and Google Drive to make your class paperless

Staff:
- Academics: Identify ideas for students/coursework to improve sustainability practices in your department
- Landscaping: Join our urban forestry team and engage the campus in environmental stewardship
- Purchasing: Purchase reusable event supplies. If you must get single-use, be sure it’s “BPI certified”

Students:
- Energy: Utilize a community fridge instead of owning a personal one.
- Purchasing: Eat vegetarian or vegan at least one meal per day
- Transportation: Take VTA bus 22/522 to get to Valley Fair and Santana Row instead of a ride-hailing service

Administration:
- Climate: Incorporate SCU’s climate commitment into your speeches: share stories and provide a vision for success
- Energy: Encourage employees to submit a proposal to the Campus Sustainability Investment Fund
- Transportation: Reduce travel for meetings and instead conduct them virtually (try Zoom)

Supervisors:
- Engagement: Include sustainability in employee performance reviews
- Purchasing: Get your department to stop buying bottled water (bottles or delivery service) - use a filter and reusable bottles
- Waste: Ensure all new employees in your building are trained about waste reduction and waste sorting

Individuals earn badges by engaging in sustainable behaviors. Participants in events like "Bike to Work Day", waste characterizations, tree monitoring events, or Sustainability Across the Curriculum workshops earn badges. Others badges can be earned via peer-nomination or direct engagement with the Center for Sustainability.

To streamline participation, Playbooks were designed so at a first glance, individuals can gauge at what level they are ready to participate. Each action has a header, a description, and two icons - time investment and level of impact. Each Playbook comes in two additional versions: one for busy people (only minimal time investment actions) and another for people who want to make an immediate, measurable impact (with only high-impact actions).

Using Principles of Influence (Robert B. Cialdini) and Community-Based Social Marketing (Doug McKenzie-Mohr), our badge system compels individuals to showcase their sustainability contributions and provide social proof for others, encouraging everyone to do more. (Peers wonder, what’s that Boy Scout-looking patch on your laptop?) Individuals may nominate their peers to earn badges, which increases participation, elevates social proof, and aids the powerful marketing tool of word-of-mouth.

Faculty are incorporating the Sustainability Strategic Plan into their courses. Campus organizations are using the Department Playbook to identify areas of improvement in operational practices. Campus employees are joining our peer engagement programs to learn more about how they can support their departments’ efforts. And most fun, students are competing with each other to see who can collect all 9 badges. The Center for Sustainability celebrates badge-earners at our annual Sustainability Celebration at the end of the academic year.

Since its debut in January 2019, 121 people have started to collect the badges and live more sustainably. 191 badges have been distributed in the areas of Academics, Engagement, Climate Commitment, Energy, Transportation, Water, Landscaping, Purchasing, and Waste. There has been an increase in people attending waste characterizations, engaging with social media to showcase their actions, and transforming their courses to become more sustainable. Since this campaign was started recently, the Center for Sustainability expects more and more people to get involved.