Awards & Recognition

In time for Earth Day, the UW has been listed among the 22 most environmentally responsible “green colleges” in a guidebook just published by the Princeton Review and the Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council.

Those schools all received the highest rating (99) in a 2013 survey of 832 schools in the U.S. and Canada that asked about the institutions’ sustainability related policies, practices and programs. It is the fifth consecutive year UW has been on the “green colleges” list.

Nestled in the Department of Environmental and Forest Sciences on south campus, the DeLuca Lab is a little different than its peers. Shutdown procedures cover its machines, signs with friendly reminders not to drain soil hover over its sinks, and as of now, it holds the Green Laboratory Certification Program’s highest sustainability score.

Fargreen, a social enterprise using technology to convert rice straw waste into a product that can be used for mushroom farming, edged out five other finalist teams to win the grand prize of $12,500 at the University of Washington's Global Social Entrepreneurship Competition, held last week in Seattle.

Nominations for the Husky Green Award are open through March 10. In its fifth year, the award recognizes individuals or groups that demonstrate exemplary commitment to sustainability at the UW. Sponsored by the Environmental Stewardship Committee, nominees may be students, faculty, staff, departments or teams at any UW campus. Winners will be recognized during Earth Day festivities in April.

Nominations for the Husky Green Award are now open. In its fifth year, the award recognizes individuals or groups that demonstrate exemplary commitment to sustainability at the UW. Sponsored by the Environmental Stewardship Committee, the award encourages leadership, initiative and dedication. Nominees may be students, faculty, staff, departments or teams at any UW campus.

The nomination submission deadline is March 10, 2014. Winners will be recognized during Earth Day festivities in April.

A soils lab that schedules fieldwork to minimize car trips, reuses sampling containers and recycles soils and leftover plant material has achieved the highest score yet in the University of Washington’s 10-month-old Green Laboratory certification program.

With an overall score of 95 percent, Tom DeLuca’s environmental and forest sciences lab has just topped the 93 percent previously earned by a UW Bothell chemistry instructional lab.

The University of Washington is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2014 Green Seed Fund, sponsored by UW Sustainability. The Fund awards money to select projects that advance sustainable research and contribute to campus sustainability goals. The 2014 winning proposals are:

The University of Washington’s sustainability efforts rank in the top 10% of universities worldwide, according to a report by the Universitas Indonesia (UI). The UI Greenmetric report lists the UW as 28th out of the 301 universities from 61 countries that took part in the ranking.

The US Green Building Council recently awarded LEED gold certification to UW Medicine Phase 3.1 in South Lake Union. Green features of the 183,000-square-foot, seven-story building include a storm water cistern for irrigation, a heat-recovery chiller, high-efficiency boilers, exhaust air energy recovery and more. The project was financed through $165 million in tax-exempt bonds via the National Development Council. The building has space for more than 400 researchers in immunology, rheumatology, kidney research, infectious disease treatment and prevention, and vision sciences.

The UW Tower Data Center is one of just 27 data centers in the country to have earned a 2013 ENERGY STAR Certification from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. This recognizes reduced power consumption, lowered carbon footprint, and slower growth of future power needs. The Tower Data Center, operated by UW-IT, provides managed space, power and cooling of critical infrastructure supporting IT departments campus-wide. The UW is one of only two universities in the country to have ever received this certification.