2014-2015

Food scarcity in urban populations is a significant and growing problem that the world is beginning to address. Indoor farming is a solution that many are adopting. Growing food indoors allows food to be localized in densely populated areas, which can significantly decrease costs and increase quality and quantity. The largest obstacle to realizing these benefits is the prohibitive operating costs associated with traditional horticulture lights. The University of Washington is dealing with this same problem in the wide variety of greenhouses throughout campus.

Project Tap That's goal is to educate University of Washington (UW) students about the harmful effects of single-use plastic water bottles, promote the use of reusable water bottles, and ultimately ban the sale of plastic water bottles on campus. Many students do not equate their food and consumption choices with real world problems because the effects are not immediately (or ever) felt or seen by the consumer.

Forty years after its dedication, it's time to make changes at the University’s Manastash Ridge Observatory (MRO) that reflect the realities of how we use the facility and respect our impact on natural resources, particularly our water and energy consumption. We propose to upgrade our bathrooms, kitchen, and lighting to conserve water and energy, and to build a rainwater catchment system and a solar energy system to reduce our reliance on outside water and power. The budget for this proposal is approximately $60,000, of which $49,000 is for the solar energy system.

UW Grounds Management and UW Facilities Construction (Facility Services) seeks $43,603.00 to obtain the necessary infrastructure to augment the salvage wood program which creates products from trees that are removed from the campus-wide landscape. By keeping the tree material on campus, money is saved in disposal cost, less energy is used in waste transportation, some of the asset value of the tree is retained by being incorporated into campus projects and the investment made into that tree over time is preserved, especially if the final product becomes a permanent feature on campus.

The UW Shellfish Farm is a project conceived by several graduate students, faculty and staff at the School of Aquatic & Fishery Sciences (SAFS), in collaboration with the School of Marine & Environmental Affairs (SMEA) and the College of the Environment. We seek to establish a student-run shellfish farm at the Big Beef Creek Research Station, a SAFS field site on Hood Canal. The overarching goals of the project are:

Educational signage and benches for Kincaid Ravine aims to install 2 benches handmilled from leftover timber cut down by the campus arborist, and three 12"x12" educational signs designed by UW Museology students and produced professionally by Fossil Graphics. This educational "nook" is located just south of the wetland, on the eastern perimeter of the Kincaid Ravine restoration site, approximately 15 feet off of the Burke Gilman Trail (BGT). It will create an essential education and outreach component to the sustainability initiatives already occurring in Kincaid Ravine.

The Sustainable Stormwater Coordinator (SSC) position designates a SEFS research aide appointment to spread awareness about and physically improve stormwater treatment on campus. This is accomplished by investigating the current quantity and quality of campus stormwater, analyzing a suite of suitable water management tools, and building a collaborative student-faculty-administration approach to this pressing issue.