Executive Summary
The Go Team, Go Green project uses a friendly competitive spirit and school pride as motivating factors to engage in campus sustainability. A fundamental aspect of student life at UW –as well as at universities around the country and worldwide– is intercollegiate athletics. Major UW sports events such as men's football and women's basketball are extremely popular among students on campus, and also provide an important means for alumni and other community members to stay connected and involved with the UW flagship campus in Seattle. This project used this powerful community and campus social phenomenon of intercollegiate athletics as a motivating factor for sustainability.
Specifically, the team worked with a broad array of student groups at UW and other Pac-12 campuses to organize intercollegiate sustainability challenges to occur during the school year in the week leading up to particular intercollegiate Pac-12 athletics matches. For example, in the week before the UW-University of Colorado football match, student groups from the Seattle and Boulder campuses had a friendly competition for the most sustainable student group and overall campus; another such competition occurred in the week leading up to the UW-Oregon women's basketball match. Judges will be made up of students from a participating Pac-12 school not competing against UW that week.