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The Biosustainability Workgroup

Resource over consumption—especially by the US—is a major contributing factor to environment degradation worldwide. As scientists and biologists we have the knowledge and the responsibility to act and to set an example for the rest of the University and the community. We are a group of students, staff, and faculty who are interested in finding potential solutions to this problem and ways to increase sustainability.
All members of the Department of Biology are welcome and encouraged to participate. Volunteers are needed for all posts in this workgroup including coordinators, mailing list maintainer, and webmaster. The coordinators will be rotated on a quarterly or bi-quarterly basis.

examine the ecological footprint of our department, identify factors that have major impacts and design strategies to minimize such impact
serve as liaison with other groups at the UW that have similar interests
raise the awareness on “reduce, reuse and recycle” habits and research ways to widen the scope of such activities

Thanks to Dr. Nicotri, recycling is now part of official Biology Department field trip policy. Read Evan’s “update” in Resources.
The Biosustainability group invites all its members, the Department of Biology, and all interested in UW to a Brown bag lunch seminar series on selected Mondays at noon. Invited speakers will offer informative talks and share their experiences and challenges in their efforts to achieve sustainability and reduce human ecological footprint.
Summary and listing of past seminars can be found in Activities. There is an update on Evan’s biodiesel presentation.
We want to thank everyone for participating in the efforts to minimize waste generated in Departmental events. Thanks to all of you who happily carried plates, mugs, and utensils, and used the labeled containers for different type of waste and recyclables at the recent Biology Spring BBQ “pig-roast feast”. We only filled 2 of the 4 containers with “true garbage”, only one container with recyclable items, and a few containers of composables went to the compost pile of the UW urban farmers.
Troy Coleman of Howling Beagle Design is the winner of the mug logo design contest.