the UW Sustainability blog
UW Sustainability has been working on achieving Target 5 of the UW Sustainability Action Plan: Reducing carbon emissions from air travel five percent by 2025. A working group of faculty, staff and students representing environmental science, political science, public service, procurement, and other departments and disciplines meet regularly to work towards this goal.
As a major research institution, the UW has a global impact, and many faculty and staff members regularly travel by air. Just how far, and the carbon impact of all that travel, was until recently something the UW could only estimate. Over the past year, the Sustainability Office has been working with student teams to gather the UW's travel data, quantify our air travel carbon footprint, and make recommendations. The student teams also interviewed faculty and staff to learn about campus attitudes towards travel.