Congratulations Green Globe Awardees!

April 24, 2019 / / No Comments

Congratulations to Young’s Restaurant and The Wilderness Society for being two of 2019’s Green Globe Awardees!

Young’s Restaurant family with ECOSS partner.Photo Credit: ECOSS.

Presented by King County, the Green Globe Award recognizes outstanding leadership in environmental stewardship. It is the County’s highest honor for local environmental efforts.

Young’s Restaurant is the first Seattle business to utilize King County’s RainWise rebate program. ECOSS facilitated the installation process by recruiting multicultural contractors, guiding them through the RainWise certification training and helping the Vietnamese and Chinese contractors and restaurant owners through the English-dominated process.

The Wilderness Society and ECOSS partners. Photo Credit: Ned Ahrens / King County.

The Wilderness Society partnered with ECOSS to conduct outreach around the Trailhead Direct public transit service within historically underserved communities of color. This affordable alternative to driving provides greater access to the natural beauty that the Pacific Northwest has to offer. With support form The Wilderness Society and King County Parks, ECOSS extended awareness of the service into the Bhutanese, Latinx, Korean and Khmer communities of the Greater Seattle area.

Dow Constantine. Photo Credit: ECOSS.

“Throughout King County, people, businesses and nonprofits are doing extraordinary work to protect the spectacular natural environment that is central to our identity and our quality of life,” said Executive Constantine. “The Green Globe Award recipients we honor today inspire and challenge us to leave this special place even better for future generations.”

ECOSS received the Green Globe Award in 1999 for leadership in protecting water quality and in 2015 for leadership in environmental equity. Building on experience, ECOSS is proud to share its strengths and elevate others to be environmental and equity leaders.

Congratulations again to Young’s Restaurant and The Wilderness Society. Read more about their work and ECOSS’ role in promoting outdoors access and environmental equity.

Check out this year’s 13 amazing Green Globe Awardees

Multicultural business outreach the focus of City Habitats story

November 7, 2018 / / No Comments

Young’s family standing in front of their restaurant’s cisterns. Photo Credit: Sam Le.

Equitable access to environmental solutions means reaching out to underserved communities. These are often the people most impacted by water pollution, air pollution and other environmental challenges, yet commonly face language and cultural barriers that hinder their ability to protect the environment.

In partnership with King County’s RainWise program, ECOSS helped Young’s Restaurant become the first Seattle restaurant and business to be part of the stormwater pollution solution. And The Nature Conservancy’s City Habitats program recently featured this accomplishment!

ECOSS recruited multicultural contractors for this project and helped both the contractors and restaurant owners navigate the RainWise program to install and maintain cisterns at Young’s Restaurant.

Learn more about our RainWise work

Young’s Restaurant featured in NW Asian Weekly

October 18, 2018 / / No Comments

The Young family cutting the ribbon to commemorate the first restaurant-owned cisterns in Seattle. Photo credit: Sam Le.

Read the NW Asian Weekly article!

Young’s Restaurant recently commemorated their cisterns with ECOSS and King County RainWise. They are the first Seattle restaurant and business to install green stormwater infrastructure — sustainable solutions that help mitigate stormwater pollution. This success story was possible due to multicultural support from ECOSS and an effective partnership with King County. Young’s is protecting Puget Sound waters by decreasing the risk of combined sewer overflows while storing water for tending their gardens. Read more about them in this Northwest Asian Weekly article.

Check out more RainWise stories!

Chinese American diner is the first business to become RainWise

August 29, 2018 / / No Comments

Stormwater pollution is Puget Sound’s #1 source of pollution. One restaurant, however, is on the forefront of reducing this pollution.

During heavy rains, stormwater surges through city pipes. These surges can cause overflows that dump untreated sewage into Puget Sound, degrading the health of aquatic life as well as the people that swim in Puget Sound waters. King County was recently fined over $100,000 for such pollution. Because of historical wastewater management decisions, mitigating stormwater pollution is one of the region’s most critical priorities today.

Young’s Restaurant is a Chinese-owned establishment that serves up American diner classes alongside traditional Chinese cuisine. Photo Credit: Ned Ahrens.

With ECOSS’ help, Young’s Restaurant is the first business to utilize the RainWise program to install cisterns on their property to reduce Seattle’s stormwater pollution. Cisterns capture water that runs off roofs, reducing the volume of stormwater entering our sewer system during large storms and saving that water for drier days.

“Last year, I had blueberries and lots of herbs that used a lot of water, and I really loved that I can collect the rain and use it for my herb garden and plants.” – Janice, owner of Young’s Restaurant. Photo Credit: Ned Ahrens.

Ultimately, cisterns reduce our water use, reduce Puget Sound pollution and beautify our surroundings. A dual-win for nature and communities.

RainWise helps offset the cost of cisterns and rain gardens by providing up to a 100% rebate on installation costs. ECOSS provides access by guiding businesses and residents through the program, utilizing our capacity of over a dozen languages.

Young’s Restaurant installed three cisterns, which altoghter can hold over 1500 square feet of water. Photo Credit: Ned Ahrens.

Read the NW Asian Weekly article!

Check out Seattle Channel’s video covering the ribbon-cutting celebration!

Congratulations to Young’s for your Green Globe Award from King County!

Check out more RainWise stories!