By Lindsey Boisvin, Facilities Services' Sustainability Communications Intern
To recognize the efforts of the University of Washington campus community, UW Sustainability hosted a Sustainability Leadership event on Tuesday, Oct. 20. Campus sustainability leaders met in Odegaard Undergraduate Library to celebrate national recognition of UW's sustainability efforts and other successes on campus.
In the past few months alone, UW was ranked one of the top 10 greenest schools by the Sierra Club magazine, won the Green Honor Roll award within the Princeton Review’s Green Rating system and earned a national sustainable athletics award from the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics.
These honors are often based on data provided by campus partners such as Facilities Services including building energy usage, water consumption, transportation mode share, fleet administration, sustainable grounds management practices, waste reduction and diversion, cleaning practices, and more. You can take a peek at the University’s sustainability metrics at the online dashboard.
Provost Gerald Baldasty joined the celebration to congratulate campus leadership on their sustainable efforts.
Many Facilities Services departments have also earned recognition recently for their sustainability efforts. In the past year Fleet Services was named the third greenest university fleet in North America, and thanks to Casey Gifford, Transportation Services now has its own climate action plan to guide sustainability projects over the coming years.
Under the leadership of Norm Menter and his team of energy conservation engineers, in partnership with teams from Campus Engineering & Operations, most campus buildings have been audited for energy improvement projects and many projects are already underway. In July, Puget Sound Energy recognized Facilities Services for its improvements in the Physics/Astronomy Building with a utility rebate check, on top of the energy and cost savings associated with the energy improvements.
Facilities Maintenance & Construction’s light and filter shop continues to change campus lights over to LED lights when possible, and other shops have looked for inventive new ways to use new, more sustainable materials, or reuse materials when possible.
Facilities’ own Building Services brought in a Grand Green Cleaning Award in late 2014, and Transportation Services received a Commute Trip Reduction award from the City of Seattle earlier this year.
Find more sustainability stories in the latest Facilities Services newsletter.
