Blogs

Sustainability is part of the fabric of the University of Washington. One of the ten goals in the UW Sustainability Action Plan is to produce ten percent less solid waste by 2025. This means reducing the amount of waste the UW sends to the landfill by ten percent.

Rethinking and reusing items are some of the most impactful ways to move towards our goal. Programs across the UW focus on rethinking and promoting reuse. Below are programs offered at the UW Seattle campus.

Welcome new (and returning) students! With Fall quarter starting, Dawg Daze has tons of events to help new students learn about campus and resources at the UW. There are many events focusing on sustainability, including campus tours and student group meetings.

We've put together a list of some of the Dawg Daze events related to sustainability, including ways to learn more about the UW Sustainability office and how you can get engaged with sustainability efforts on campus. Find even more events on the Dawg Daze site.

The Washington & Oregon Higher Education Sustainability Conference (WOHESC) is now accepting proposals for the next conference, to be held March 5-7, 2025, at Portland Community College. The conference theme is "Cultivating Sustainable Communities."

Submissions for program content, speakers and sessions will be accepted until October 18, 2024. See the full details below or as a PDF.

The phrase recycling contamination isn’t clear to people outside of the waste industry. Let’s break it down:

According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, contaminate means "to soil, stain, corrupt, or infect by contact or association" or "to make inferior or impure by admixture." In recycling, a contaminant is something that should not be in recycling because it can degrade other materials or the recycling process.

When we talk about sustainability, we need to zoom out to recognize the deep connections we as a people have with our environment. If we only think about practicing sustainability from a traditional environmental perspective, focusing only on ecosystems and conservation, it is easy to lose sight of these connections. Keeping a primarily ecological view such as this one makes it easy to fall into the trap of thinking that nature exists separately from people, and ignoring the perspectives and realities of much of the world. 

As we look toward the Fall quarter, I’m encouraged by our accomplishments of the past academic year and even more excited about what’s to come.

Over the past few months we’ve completed UW’s first comprehensive Greenhouse Gas Inventory, introduced a proposal to reduce the University’s emissions from air travel, started the process of creating the next Sustainability Action Plan and much more.

UW students living in the North campus neighborhood can get rid of unwanted items for free during the Husky Neighborhood Cleanup. On Monday, September 23 and Tuesday, September 24 trucks will be on site accepting items for recycling or disposal.

A UW student Husky card will be required to drop off material. Items can be taken on those days to the median at 17th Ave NE & NE 47th St. from 1 to 5 p.m. or until the trucks are full.

Accepted items include:

Even when we do our best to reduce food waste, it's inevitable some scraps will need to be disposed of. It’s important to ensure that this waste ends up in the proper receptacle - your compost bin!

The inaugural National Sustainability Society (NSS) conference will be held this Fall at the University of Washington on September 9-11, 2024.

Danny Arguetty has joined the Campus Sustainability Fund (CSF) as Program Director. CSF, housed within and closely collaborating with UW Sustainability, is thrilled to welcome him. Danny is excited to co-lead the fund with CSF’s student staff and committee, championing the mission of justice-centered sustainability, recognizing the disproportionate negative impact of climate change on communities of color, particularly Black and Indigenous peoples.