2020-2021

Spearheaded and designed by the Green Futures Lab with funding from the CSF, the UW Biodiversity Green Wall was completed in the fall of 2012, transforming two blank concrete walls into lush urban habitat. Located in the southeast corner of Gould Hall on 15th Avenue and NE 40th Street, the award-winning project has been widely publicized and has the potential to provide numerous benefits such as reducing building energy needs, mitigating heat island effects, conserving potable water, reducing stormwater pollution, and increasing urban biodiversity.

Our project is RhizoMet. We will utilize engineered bacteria in plants to selectively accumulate arsenic by expressing novel proteins with a high binding affinity to the heavy metal, which will be a more sustainable method of removing arsenic from the environment. Our plan is to install these plants in the local areas that are affected by arsenic upon completion.

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The UW Sustainability Action plan has 10 targets ranging from increasing student engagement to sourcing more food locally, and despite UW's world-leading sustainability program, not all students are aware of the current goals of the plan and how they can contribute. Our group EarthGames would like to build an app that illustrates the 10 targets of the UW Sustainability Action Plan, to be played by students, faculty, and staff.

ReThink, GC3 and Net Impact are teaming up to bring back UW's 4th annual Global Sustainability Case Competition in an all new, virtual setting! Teams of up to four students will compete to solve a real-life business problem with an innovative and environmentally sustainable solution. Our competition is focused on being a beginner-friendly case in order to expose prospective and newly-admitted business students to the world of case competitions.

Eraced Magazine is a print and online media publication chronicling the ways racial trauma of the past impacts all spheres of life today. Rather than echoing the rigid confines of race as a matter of opinion, Eraced is guided by the concept of intersectionality and seeks to amplify the voices of Black, Indigenous, and people of color. The publication has a number of mediums for discussing race, including news and op-ed pieces, photoessays, poetry, prose, graphic illustrations, and podcasts.

Our goal is to give high-school students a chance to experience the engineering process and learn about renewable energy. We want to encourage them to explore engineering and sustainability, especially as a possible major and career. Furthermore, to promote equal access and opportunity to the engineering field, we want to especially target students from lower socioeconomic areas like South King County.

Project Orca is the Human Powered Submarine Team’s eco effort to manufacture our submarine hull using sustainable materials such as flax fibers and a recycled foam core. As an undergraduate engineering team at the University of Washington, our main goal is to provide our nearly 50 member team with as much real engineering experience as possible by designing, manufacturing, testing, and racing a competitive human powered submarine. Given our philosophy, this year we decided to take a more sustainable approach to our normal engineering practices.

Conservation and equity are intrinsically intertwined topics that have often been treated as two separate areas of study. Science, conservation, and management not only benefit from having a diversity of stakeholder perspectives informing projects, but the effects of management and scientific policies extend more broadly than the ecosystems they impact. This seminar will highlight the importance of cross-cultural collaboration and competency in science.

The Power to the Pollinator Project will develop a 600 sq. ft. on-campus pollinator garden consisting of native flowering plants, evergreen shrubs, and year-round woody shelter. The diverse planting collection will ensure that native pollinators have a diverse food bank from February to October with places to overwinter and burrow. As the plants mature, long-term symbiotic relationships between invertebrates, micro-organisms, and other wildlife species will also develop.