Amount Awarded: $999
Project Status: Completed

The UW Night Market has been an event held in Red Square every year since 2001. It is one of the Taiwanese Student Association’s signature events and easily the largest in scale in terms of people. The event recreates traditional night markets in Taiwan and is centered around food. Last year, we had 24 total vendors. Every year, this event creates large amounts of waste that isn’t properly disposed of by guests; this year, we plan to create a recycling plan that alleviates this issue.

Amount Awarded: $337
Project Status: Completed

The teaching apiary at the UW Farm contains 10-12 hives of honey bees and is used by students to learn basic beekeeping skills and also to perform experiments in bee biology. The bee course has been taught Summer A+B terms since 2011. Support for the program derives from student fees, covering course-specific activities, and an account funded by donations and fund raising, which covers maintenance of the hives and equipment acquisition. Researchers from departments as varied as Chemistry and Psychology have used the hives as education and research subjects in past years.

Amount Awarded: $70,000
Project Status: Active: Planning phase

This project proposes the production of molded biodegradable pots to replace agricultural and horticultural plastic pots on campus. These pots will be made using switchgrass and brewer’s spent grain, both of which are readily available to the Paper and Bioproducts Center located in the basement of Bloedel Hall; a floor layout of this lab can be found attached to this proposal in Figure 2. The Paper and Bioresource Center focuses on conversion of raw bio-materials into pulp, paper, products, and fuels; making it a synergistic fit for this new sustainable molding technology.

Amount Awarded: $14,000
Project Status: Active: Post-implementation phase

The Odegaard Library is one of the most utilized and occupied libraries on our campus. Thousands of students, faculty and guest use this facility on a 24-hour basis. The usage of water to flush the toilets of this facility is obviously unavoidable. This unavoidable act of water consumption is something we are looking to minimize. New technological advances are providing the world with water-efficient toilets capable of reducing water consumption while maintaining a level of cleanliness and sanitation.

Amount Awarded: $500
Project Status: Completed

We believe that art is essential to the activism surrounding sustainability movements and often functions as a catalyst for engagement. In our search for a band, we focused our efforts on finding local UW student ensembles. Supporting the sustainability of the arts on the UW campus was an important value that helped aided our selection. We also considered that finding the right group could could help establish a precedent for collaboration for future events like the SustainableUW Festival.

Amount Awarded: $21,931
Project Status: Completed

Our innovative solution to the issue of energy consumption is to install a number of solar charging tables on campus. Solar charging tables allow people to be outdoors, and to see the source of the energy they are utilizing. By seeing the source of power first hand, and reading signage posted at the tables, we hope to change student’s mindsets and to increase awareness and mindfulness of energy consumption, leading to behavioral changes across campus. In addition to the physical and technical use of the tables, the goal of this project is to expose the University to solar power.

Amount Awarded: $88,319
Project Status: Active: Post-implementation phase

Our project involves replacing UW Mailing Service delivery trucks with five electric assist cargo bicycles complete with fully secured cargo boxes and trailers. This project entails restructuring our delivery methods to ensure efficiency and effectiveness of the bicycles. Through incorporating our main operation in the Publications Building, located in the Southwest campus, as well as two additional satellite locations, we can utilize our resources to cut costs and emissions.

Amount Awarded: $14,840
Project Status: Active: Post-implementation phase

The Local Projects branch of Engineers Without Borders (EWB) at the University of Washington will design and construct a series of eight phone charging stations powered by entirely by solar energy. Once construction is complete, these stations will be implemented throughout the University of Washington Seattle campus, in locations such as Husky Stadium and Rainier Vista for public use.

Amount Awarded: $12,050
Project Status: Active: Planning phase

The UW Floating Wetlands Project has the opportunity to be a unique and exciting deployment of a new technology and, as such, educating the public to the function of these structures is a top priority. Phase II will allow for outreach to the public and greater UW student body through the built demonstration wetlands, accompanying signage, publicity, and expanded partnerships for monitoring and stewardship of the project.

Amount Awarded: $52,700
Project Status: Active: Planning phase

Friday Harbor Labs (FHL) is University of Washington’s marine biology laboratory on San Juan Island. FHL has a more than 100 year history of environmental stewardship as well as marine and terrestrial ecology research and education, and is a beacon of ecological connectedness and sustainability in the Pacific Northwest. Nevertheless, the lack of a fully sustainable solid waste disposal program at FHL represents a clear and easily addressable area for improvement.

Amount Awarded: $1,000
Project Status: Inactive

The Green Greek Representative Energy Challenge is a challenge designed to make the Greek community more energy efficient, which will make it more desirable to people who choose housing based on sustainability. Through this challenge, we seek to educate men and women in the Greek community about making sustainable choices that will save them and their chapters money while also helping improve the environment.

Amount Awarded: $1,000
Project Status: Completed

The University of Washington has over 161 acres of turf grass.  Grounds maintenance, at the University applies a custom, slow release chemical fertilizer (F-6 Wil-Grow Wil-Cote Custom-CFM 25-0-5) for all turf applications. Chemical fertilizers can be detrimental to the environment and to the long term health of soils. With global warming at the forefront of scientific research, it is imperative that alternative, environmentally friendly lawn care systems are implemented. Revising the fertilizer plan for the lawns is a potentially important step for grounds management to undertake.

Amount Awarded: $21,176
Project Status: Active: Planning phase

Local cleantech start-up SafeFlame aims to tackle a glut of high profile issues effecting people in developing nations. First among these is the potent issue of indoor pollutants. Globally, more than 3 billion people cook using biomass (wood, animal dung, crop waste, or charcoal). The indoor pollution created by burning these fuels results in over 4.3 million deaths annually with deaths particularly high among women and young children, who spend the most time within the home.

Amount Awarded: $999
Project Status: Completed

Not only did Keraton attracted 8000 people last year but also had 13 vendors selling food. As a result, there is a substantial amount of waste produced. This year, Keraton is aiming to attract 10000 people. Surely, there will be more waste produced than last year. Therefore ISAUW will implement the ‘Keraton Going Green’ effort, which will ensure the reduction of waste production by vendors as well as the overseeing of waste sorting in the recycling and compost bins locations.

Amount Awarded: $980
Project Status: Completed

Can't make it in to the bike shop? Now, the bike shop can make it to you. The Mobile Maintenance Trailer allows the student mechanics at the ASUW Bike Shop to traverse this majestic campus with all the tools necessary to provide safety-check and quick tune-up services for any UW cyclists they encounter, free of charge. Everything a rusty bicycle could ever want, including an assortment of professional shop tools and an array of greases, degreasers, and lubricants, will be kept conveniently in a Surly long-bed trailer.

Amount Awarded: $1,000
Project Status: Completed

This project attempts to assess the feasibility of the University of Washington switching to an organic fertilizing system. The efficacy of biosolids, compost, and compost tea will be compared to the 8,000 pounds of chemical fertilizer that are annually applied to the campus lawns. 

Amount Awarded: $1,000
Project Status: Completed

Amount Awarded: $550
Project Status: Completed

Radical Public Health UW is hosting an evening of discussion and consciousness-raising about the root causes and myriad dangers of the global climate change crisis. In the current political context, local and global, it is more important than ever before to have honest, unapologetic discussions about this growing emergency.

Amount Awarded: $36,300
Project Status: Active: Post-implementation phase

In 2013, a proposal to build an outdoor "sustainable learning space" for Environmental Studies (Program on the Environment) students on the north lawn of Wallace Hall was born out of the tragic loss of Tikvah Weiner, then PoE Administrator, to breast cancer. At the end of her life, Tikvah spoke to the PoE community about her desire to see this area used for the benefit of students, as a demonstration of sustainable practices; a place where experiential learning extended out of the classroom and into the adjacent green space.

Amount Awarded: $25,000
Project Status: Active: Post-implementation phase

Cycle Pack is a bicycle library program that encourages bicycle ridership by providing long term bicycle rentals to UW students. Unlike bike share, which provide short term bicycle rentals between two hubs, and regular bike rentals, which facilitate daily or weekend use, a long term rental gives users an experience of bicycle ownership and the ability to commute by bicycle. The experience of ownership teaches users about the various ways a bicycle can fit into one’s everyday life as well as the responsibility that stems from maintaining and preventing bicycle theft.

Amount Awarded: $6,868
Project Status: Completed

We are conducting a feasibility and design study for an app-based environmental challenge game that educates incoming student cohorts about sustainable practices on and around the UW campus. The challenge game concept is intended to orient new students to the sustainability resources in their new community, and create incentives and rewards - tangible and otherwise - for taking actions and adopting behaviors that conserve resources during their tenure at UW and beyond.

Amount Awarded: $52,000
Project Status: Completed

UW Sustainability Action Network (UW-SAN) will be a campus wide sustainability resource center that provides online and in-person support for student driven projects. The online component of UW-SAN will consist of: 1) a blog and website with resources, events, updates on student projects, and archives of student organizations and projects, and 2) a networking website that connects student groups for coalition building and provides a space for projects to form.

Amount Awarded: $17,000
Project Status: Active: Post-implementation phase

Our project will pair-up UW food waste with local non-profit agencies in need through the design of a website that would facilitate the logistics and transportation of food waste from UW Food Services without having so many food products go to compost. Over the course of two quarters, Irini Spyridakis and Madison Holbrook will lead a team of 15 undergraduate and masters students. The team will research, design, build, and implement a responsive website for UW HFS Dining facilities to connect with local non-profit organizations. 

Amount Awarded: $100,000
Project Status: Active: Post-implementation phase

UW-Solar is a student-led organization working with architecture firm Perkins+Will to install building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) and rooftop photovoltaics (PV) on the new Life Sciences Building of the University of Washington Seattle campus. The intended installation will serve both as an ancillary source of electrical power and a heat gain control measure on the building envelope. The BIPV panels will also be highly visible and showcase UW as a steward in sustainable construction. The rooftop PV will generate substantial clean energy and reduce the building's carbon footprint.