Come Earth Week, students can expect to see the return of some warm weather, a campus-wide clean-up challenge, a Red Square celebration — and no meat.
On Monday, April 16, Housing Food Services (HFS) looks to kick off Earth Week with a plan that, for one day, will eliminate all meat products from the dining facilities in both the 8 and Terry Hall’s Eleven 01 Cafe.
Students can now expect to see the Student Food Cooperative (SFC) cafe in the new HUB since the SFC has agreed to partner with Housing & Food Services (HFS).
The SFC promotes awareness of the environmental, social, economic, and health impacts of the agro-food system.
Jessica Wallach, co-chair of the student-run cooperative, said SFC’s autonomy was the fundamental value in the process.
The UW campus is seeing more alternative fuel vehicles like the Toyota Prius, the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt. In the lower level of the mechanical engineering building annex, UW students are working on a car that aims to leave them in the dust, from an environmental standpoint.
A team of more than 40 students is competing in the EcoCAR 2 competition, an international contest sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and General Motors Co.
With new efforts such as UW Farm, do-it-yourself bike repair stations, and the first-annual sustainability summit sprouting up around campus, the UW is going green. The Campus Sustainability Fund (CSF) is part of the process. But what goes on behind the scenes is a design meant to improve visibility on campus.
The CSF gave Husky Sustainable Storms (HSS) $9,220 to design a stormwater infrastructure project, called a bioswale, by the end of winter quarter, and they expect results.
This spring, the Quad’s vibrant cherry blossom trees will be given a run for their money. By then, a green wall — a diverse wall of vegetation — will cover the side of Gould Hall. The green wall is a part of a Biodiversity Green Wall, Edible Green Screen + Water Harvesting Demonstration project. The green screen will be for plants that are planted in the ground and climb like vines, which will allow students to explore the concept of vertical surfaces as a way to grow local plants when space in an urban environment is limited. The water-harvesting demonstration portion will capture water from the roof of Gould Hall and store it in a cistern to be used for irrigation.
While biking on campus, UW sophomore Ben Ross went over a curb and popped a tube in his tire. Instead of going home or to a bike shop to do repairs, Ross stopped by a self-repair bicycle station near Kane Hall.
The ASUW Board of Directors (BOD) has agreed to recreate the task force responsible for the launch of a food cooperative as an ASUW entity. An idea brought to the BOD by the UW Student Food Cooperative (SFC) triggered interest in bringing the co-op to campus.
“One of the big reasons why we decided to relook at this task force was that they changed the model of how they wanted to approach it,” ASUW Vice President Jocelyn McCurtain said. “Originally, they wanted to have a kitchen in the south campus.”
This month, McKinstry Executive Vice President David Allen sat down with University of Washington students to deliver the message that green jobs are real and abundant, and available in surprising places.
On-campus at the University of Washington, on a meandering quarter-acre around the Botany Greenhouse, UW students have labored for over seven years to build out a working farm, complete with “beds in buckets,” cold-frames, irrigation system, two bee hives, and four plump chickens with their own custom chicken-tractor. And last but not least, a functioning clay-and-straw pizza oven! (More on that later.)