The University of Washington is in the process of updating our Sustainability Action Plan, which will lay out our goals and priorities and drive future actions.
The UW’s first Sustainability Action Plan was adopted in 2020 with a five-year framework. Now it’s time to look forward and create an ambitious plan to guide our path to a sustainable future. This new plan will set a long-term vision for 2050, while also determining the actions and strategies that will be needed over the next five years.
Over the past academic year, UW Sustainability held in-person visioning sessions on all three UW campuses, as well as with UW Medicine, the students of Huskies for Equitable Sustainability (HuES), the Sustainability Action Plan Executive Committee, and through tabling pop-ups on our campuses.
Through these sessions and online feedback, a few key themes emerged. These included integration and visibility of sustainability; community participation; leadership and accountability; and justice, equity and inclusion.
“Equity and sustainability must be inseparable. Our community is asking us to embed justice in every part of the plan—from how we build and teach to how we hire, partner, and invest.”
comment from a visioning session participant
The ideas raised through these visioning efforts have helped shape the development of the Sustainability Action Plan drafts, and the formation of long-term targets looking toward 2050, with visions for our greenhouse gas emissions, waste, resilience, ecosystems and engagement.
This Spring, working groups composed of staff, faculty and students have come together around eight topic areas: academics; research and innovation; buildings, energy and climate; commuting and transportation; procurement and finance; food systems; landscapes and ecological systems; materials and waste; and community building and engagement. These working groups played a key role in the development of draft targets and actions for the UW in each of these topic areas, taking into account feedback gained in the visioning sessions and operational expertise from subject matter experts across the tri-campus. These groups continue to iterate on the refinement of draft targets for the UW to reach in 2050, as well as near-term actions needed in the next five years to move us toward long-term success goals.
You can see the draft targets and actions for all eight areas in this working draft snapshot. This document provides a high-level look at the plan’s proposed structure, draft vision statements, and early draft priority actions. The plan is still very much in the development phase, and we invite everyone in the UW community to look at the snapshot and share your feedback through the form below (UW NetID required):
We welcome your input on any aspects of the proposed Sustainability Action Plan, whether they are general thoughts or specific suggestions.
Going forward, UW Sustainability and our consultant partner Glumac will work to refine and finalize the draft plan, guided by community input as well as the working groups and other partners. During the Fall quarter we expect to have a full draft plan to present to the tri-campus for another round of engagement, before finalizing the Sustainability Action Plan in early 2026.
Watch a presentation on the Sustainability Action Plan's development process, and the working draft: