In Our Nature

Building Services Department Director Gene Woodard oversees the care of 11.5 million square feet of campus buiding space, as well as handling the waste generated by the occupants of those bulidings. Woodard has empowered employees to put forward ideas to make the work better and more efficient, while keeping on eye on the sustainability of the UW's operations.

Under Woodard, the Building Services Department has won the Grand Award for Higher Education in Green Cleaning from American School & University magazine three times. The Whole U has much more on Green Husky Award winner...

Environmental Studies lecturer Kristi Straus not only earned a Husky Green Award this year, but also a Distinguished Teaching Award, for her classes focusing on mindful sustainability.

The WholeU has a Faculty Friday feature today showing how Straus' teaching creates a deep connection with students. In her class Sustainability: Personal Choices, Broad Impacts, students are tasked with sustanability activities that provide opportunities to change their behavior or think...

The University of Washington, Western Washington University and the Evergreen State College are jointly offering a regional symposium on low-carbon space heating alternatives to natural gas. The symposium will be held Friday, May 12, from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the UW Alder Hall Commons.

There are a few low-carbon heating technologies technically feasible in the Puget Sound region. Each technology has its strengths and weaknesses, and their economic feasibility tends to be very site dependent. We are inviting facilities and operations managers of large public and commercial...

Is your office getting ready for spring cleaning? There are plenty of ways to ensure that your annual cleanup is both efficient and sustainable! With Earth Day coming up, use the following tips from UW Recycling to properly dispose of your used office supplies.

Paper

Ready to get rid of the post it notes covering your monitor? Are there research journals from the 80s collecting dust in the corner? Begin by reserving UW Recycling’s free temporary paper toters. Your week-long...

The two-month RecycleMania competition finished with the end of March, but the numbers are still being tallied. So far, the results are in through the first six weeks of the competition, and the University of Washington is holding a big lead among all Pac-12 schools. The Seattle campus is pacing the conference, but UW Bothell has been doing even better in terms of overall recycling rate. 

RecycleMania is a friendly tournament where national college campuses compete to see which can reduce, reuse and recycle the most on-campus waste. The competition ran from February 1 through April...

It was an honor to participate in UW’s “Future of Ice” Speaker Series earlier this month. Mt. Baker Ski Area hosted a weekend of talks with expert speakers from our region, and I was thrilled to spend an afternoon overlooking the beautiful powdery slopes while discussing some fundamental issues surrounding the current perceptions of climate change and how we talk about it.

The day started with a cold but gorgeous drive up to Mt. Baker, a reminder of how powerful and fragile nature can be. It was an excellent day for skiers...

At the five-week mark of RecycleMania, the University of Washington continues to lead the Pac-12 in the recycling competition.

The UW's Seattle campus is well ahead of the other Pac-12 schools and is in 31st place out of the 178 schools competing. UW Bothell is doing even better, in 26th place. According to RecycleMania, UW Seattle has recycled more than four pounds of material for every person on campus - a total of nearly 500,000 pounds recycled. 

RecycleMania is a friendly tournament where national college campuses compete to see which can reduce, reuse and recycle the...

One month of RecycleMania numbers are in, and the University of Washington continues to lead the Pac-12 by a wide margin.

Halfway through the eight-week competition, UW's Seattle campus has a recycling rate of 54.66 percent. The closest Pac-12 school is Stanford, at just over 43 percent. UW's Seattle campus is 29th overall among the 172 schools participating, and UW Bothell is just ahead in 27th place.

 RecycleMania is a friendly tournament where national college campuses compete to see which can reduce, reuse and recycle the most on-campus waste. The competition lasts...

SafeFlame is a local cleantech start-up founded by Foster School MBA student Kevin Cussen which aims to tackle a glut of high profile issues effecting people in developing nations. SafeFlame utilizes biodigesters to break down organic content and create biogas, which can be used as fuel for gas cookstoves. The company hopes to use its technology to help cut indoor pollutants caused by cookstoves that use fuels such as wood, charcoal, crop waste or animal dung. 

However, the start-up is currently working a little closer to home on a project sponsored by the Campus Sustainability Fund...

After two weeks of the nation-wide RecycleMania competition, UW Seattle remains in the lead among all Pac-12 schools, and is 25th overall. RecycleMania is a friendly tournament where national college campuses compete during the course of eight weeks to see which can reduce, reuse and recycle the most on-campus waste.

RecycleMania lasts through April 1, and all during the competition EcoReps and UW Recycling will be holding outreach events on...