In Our Nature

It's been a great week of SustainableUW Festival events, and we've loved seeing everyone get involved with campus sustainability. The festival is winding down, but it's not over yet.

Come celebrate with us this afternoon at the Bullitt Center - the greenest commercial building in the world - for the opening reception of the "Campus as a Living Lab" exhibit, co-hosted by UW Sustainability and the UW Center for Integrated Design. Explore the presentations on a variety of innovative campus sustainability projects while enjoying...

The SustainableUW Festival kicks off day four with volunteering opportunities and a wide variety of seminars and discussions to choose from, along with a careers event and poster session at Odegaard Library in the afternoon.

Stop by Mercer Court and volunteer with the UW Farm from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Or head down to Harborview Medical Center at noon and hear King County’s Tom Watson discuss...

Day three of the SustainableUW Festival kicks off with cookies, muffins, cupcakes, and plenty of coffee! Pick up some delicious Halloween treats in the lobby of Fishery Sciences and support the Student Environmental Affairs Society, an on-campus group dedicated to actively addressing emerging coastal issues. The Halloween bake sale will run from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Then, head over to Red Square for the SustainableUW Festival exhibitor...

Tuesday gets started early at the SustainableUW Festival.

At 8:30 a.m. in Architecture 147, Nicole Faghin of Washington Sea Grant will talk on "Reduc­ing the Impact of Shore­line Devel­op­ment in Puget Sound" as part of the Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence and Resource Man­age­ment Sem­i­nar: Water in the Pacific Northwest.

If your alarm isn't going off that early, you'll have an easier time making it to...

It's the opening day of the SustainableUW Festival!

UW Sustainability, the Campus Sustainability Fund and EcoReps are kicking off the festival with an open house - including Free Pizza - from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Find us in the basement of Gerberding Hall, room B40 (enter on the south side of the building across from Johnson Hall and go down the stairs). We'll be here to let you know about sustainability efforts and opportunities on campus, and you can talk with students from the Campus Sustainability Fund regarding projects they've funded and how you can apply to make...

By Lindsey Boisvin, Facilities Services’ Sustainability Communications Intern

Although Halloween is just around the corner, UW Sustainability has been meticulously organizing their own series of events – without the "tricks," and pumpkins guts.

From Oct. 26 until Oct. 31, the SustainableUW Festival will highlight sustainable leadership opportunities, contributions made to make campus green, and showcase a range of programs. Activities spread throughout the week range from lectures, to meet and greets, and even a few pre-...

From reusing dog blankets to shipping lab waste to a special recycling center, one UW lab is going the extra mile to make sustainability a priority in the workplace.

The Center for Conservation Biology is unlike most labs at the UW. For one, it tests wildlife feces that a crew of dog detectives have collected. From the samples, researchers are able to identify what types of pressures certain populations are facing,...

EcoReps has a large presence in the UW Greek Community, and we would like to highlight chapters that are making exceptional efforts to be more sustainable. This week we'll shine the spotlight on the Sigma Kappa sorority.

Nationally, Sigma Kappa has a huge focus on sustainability as is apparent with their Inherit the Earth program which encourages members to live greener lifestyles, so it makes perfect sense that their UW chapter is one of the first chapters to install a Sustainability...

Chester takes in the view of the Pyrenees Mountains in Southwest Europe before venturing out to locate brown bear poop. Photo courtesy of the Conservation Canines program

From orcas to caterpillars, a few dogs at the University of Washington can find nearly any animal you'd want to find - by looking for what they've left behind.

Since 1997, the UW Conservation Canines program has been training former strays - shelter dogs too aggressive or feisty to be adopted - to protect endangered species. Their...

A group of UW architecture students and faculty traveled to the Phillippines this summer for a study abroad program "Architecture Philippines: Building with Bamboo." The students worked with local students and learned about the potential of bamboo as a building material and a cultural symbol.

Bamboo is a historically important building material in Filipino culture, and can be a sustainable building material as a native, fast-growing plan in the Phillipines....