Keeping Northeastern’s Seattle Campus Green
A new student-driven initiative is underway at Northeastern to eliminate single-use plastic bottles. Alec Stransky, an undergraduate student in Boston, created the “NU Day, Same Bottle” campaign, which asks members of the entire university community to pledge to reduce their use of single-use plastic bottles. Read more in the latest News@Northeastern profile.
At the Seattle campus, we support the initiative and are working to educate the full campus community on ways to keep campus green by reducing waste, preserving energy and properly disposing of garbage, recycling and compost.
Students at the Neighborhood Vendor Fair on September 5th signed a pledge to Keep Campus Green and received a reusable Northeastern University-Seattle water bottle to help get them started.
The pledge stated, “I commit to carrying out the sustainability practices that align with the LEED Gold standards of Northeastern University Seattle’s campus and will encourage my peers to do the same. With this water bottle, I pledge to help reduce unnecessary waste!
The standards listed refer to The Terry Thomas building, a Gold LEED certified building that is home to NU-Seattle’s newest campus location at 225 Terry Ave.
LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. The certification system is based on 5 categories: Sustainable Sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, and indoor environmental quality. Gold is the second best certification a building can receive.
The building incorporates many unique features, including:
- A roof sensor that measures light and the angle of the sun, which causes the blinds to automatically adjust according to temperature and direct sunlight.
- In the entrance to campus on the 3rd floor the reused materials include wood from Pearl Jam’s studio, which originally recorded in South Lake Union.
Below are a number of ways students, faculty and staff can help:
