In Our Nature

This past year was unforgettable for many reasons. The challenges facing all of us certainly impacted UW Sustainability, but I am proud of what we were able to accomplish in 2020 and excited as I look forward to 2021. We are eager to continue the university’s progress on sustainability with new opportunities and goals ahead.

This past year marked the adoption of UW’s new Sustainability Action Plan. Our office coordinated much of the planning behind this document, which was officially launched in July 2020. Starting in the spring of 2019, we set out to expand the lens of...

The 2021 Washington & Oregon Higher Education Sustainabliity Conference (WOHESC) will be February 11-12. This year's conference is fully virtual, and several UW students, faculty and staff are among the speakers and panelists taking part in sessions over the two-day conference.

WOHESC is a platform for inspiring change, facilitating action, and promoting collaboration around sustainability within the Cascadia region's higher education institutions. Conversation, workshops, and networking opportunities...

The UW Sustainability team wishes all of you a happy holiday season and best wishes for 2021. We put together a video to share a few goals and tips for sustainability in the New Year:

Our team:
Daimon Eklund, Communications Coordinator
Toren Elste, Program Specialist
Marilyn Ostegren, Renewable Energy Liaison
Fotima Ibrokhim, Campus...

ReThink, a Foster School of Business student organization which is dedicated to exploring the intersection of business and sustainability, is working to create a centralized, web-based platform to identify and promote small, sustainable businesses. This "Sustainability Upheld in Business" project is hoping to provide consumers, students, and environmentally-conscious individuals with the knowledge and means to discover, investigate, and promote sustainable business practices.

ReThink expects each position to have at least two people and require about five hours a week for at least...

The University of Washington is among the national leaders in higher education sustainability, as recently recognized by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) and The Princeton Review.

AASHE’s 2020 Sustainable Campus Index recognizes the UW as a top performer in Transportation (No. 2 overall) and Food & Dining (No. 7). 

The Princeton Review named the UW the 19th greenest school...

The Society for Ecological Restoration's UW Chapter is holding a Native Plant Sale this fall, with pickup dates over the next two weekends (Nov. 7-8 and 14-15). 

The SER-UW's Native Plant Nursery organizes these native plant sales to support the student-run nursery. The sale features Puget Lowland plant species for landscaping and restoration. SER-UW has a...

Adam Fehn is a Program Coordinator with UW Recycling

It's October and you know what that means: spooky season is upon us! Now is the time for us to carve pumpkins, curl up on the couch watching scary movies and dress up as ghosts and ghouls. Unfortunately there's more for us to be afraid of this year other than witches and goblins. Holidays can promote wasteful and unsustainable practices, and Halloween is no exception. COVID-19 is also ensuring that all of our Halloweens are going to look a lot different this year, but that doesn't mean that we can't have a little fun! UW...

The UW Farm has held an annual Farm to Table dinner for about a decade, to highlight the roles of the Farm at UW and serve as a major fundraising event. This year, the dinner cannot be held. The UW Farm has been hit hard as funding from Housing and Food Services is lower than usual as demand for Farm produce is down, and the UW Farm relies on fundraising even in good years to operate.

In order to help bridge that gap, the UW Farm will be holding a virtual "Dig In! Fun-draiser" on October 28 at 7 p.m. This one-hour, family-...

The Society for Ecological Restoration - UW Chapter works to promote ecological restoration and bring students together around this goal at the UW. SER-UW organizes restoration volunteer work parties across campus. This quarter, they're able to hold work parties in groups of five people or less.

You can follow SER-UW on Instagram or visit their website to learn about these as they are scheduled.

There are also two regularly scheduled work parties during Fall quarter. Every Friday from 12...

You're probably already familiar with the 3 R's: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. And when we think about if something can be recycled, we usually think of the material as the main factor. Paper, check. Metal, check. Glass, check. Easy! Well, we'd love it if it was that easy. What determines if an item can be successfully recycled is actually more complicated. This is why recycling can seem so confusing.

Although we would love for every item to be thrown in the recycling bin, sorted, and then repurposed, it is only possible to recycle an item when it meets certain criteria. While you can...