UW Recycling

The University of Washington Seattle campus won the education & awareness category in the 2025 Campus Race to Zero Waste Case Study Competition.

As spring quarter comes to a close, the thousands of students moving out of the residence halls often have items they no longer need but are still usable. This June, a UW program made sure 59,718 pounds of those items went to local organizations and on-campus reuse groups instead of the waste stream.

The Student Clean-up, Recycle and Move-out, or SCRAM, program is designed to bridge the gap between those unwanted items and organizations looking for donations.

UW students living in the North campus neighborhood can get rid of unwanted items for free during the Husky Neighborhood Cleanup. On August 28, Sept. 22 and Sept. 23 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:

Campus artists utilized their own waste to create thoughtful and delightful pieces in UW Recycling’s sixth annual contest. This year’s submissions included a cat statuette made entirely from bread bag tags, a life-size bathroom display constructed by a house of students and placemats weaved from plastic newspaper bags.

UW Recycling's 2025 Trash Art Contest opens February 12! Participants must create an art piece from items normally thought of as waste or a literary piece about waste and sustainability. This contest is open to all UW students, faculty and staff.

Categories include:

• 2D art
• 3D art
• Textile art
• Literature

Submissions are due March 28, 2025 at 4 p.m. PDT. Winners for each category will receive $100 or $50 e-gift cards to a low-waste shop or art store.

UW Recycling has an opening for a  Zero Waste Program Coordinator will perform work using knowledge and experience specific to customer service and sustainable waste management. The position’s focus will be on implementing waste reduction initiatives as well as assisting in the development and the dissemination of information relevant to programs UW Recycling promotes.

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.

Winning pieces use art to spark conversations about waste

For the fifth year, artists from around the UW created dazzling art pieces in the annual Trash Art Contest.

Campus Race to Zero Waste (CRZW) starts this week at the University of Washington! The UW will participate in the friendly recycling and waste reduction competition between colleges and universities for the twelfth year. As part of CRZW, UW Recycling is organizing activities to focus on good waste sorting practices. Here are some ways you can get involved.

UW Recycling is now accepting entries for the 2024 Trash Art Contest! Participants must create an art piece from items normally thought of as waste or a literary piece about waste.

Categories include:

• 2D art
• 3D art
• Textile art
• Literature

Art pieces should express feelings or ideas about waste, or a sustainability topic that relates to waste. This contest is open to all UW students, faculty and staff.