The calculation stunned me. It was a moment that captured the scale—and the potential—of sustainability at Rice.
When Ian Housman of Rice’s Office of Sustainability shared that Rice used 44 million fewer gallons in 2025 than in 2019 – a 16% reduction – I tried to picture it. The number was too abstract.
In the world of water, a common comparison is the Olympic-sized swimming pool. That level of savings was enough water to fill 67 of them. Even then, it was hard to fully grasp.
What began seven years ago as a simple effort to detect leaks in the outdoor fountain by Brockman Hall of Physics had grown into a thriving water-conservation program. And none too soon: the City’s cost of water has nearly doubled since 2019. Those 44 million gallons represent nearly $1 million in savings!
When I think about our successes with water conservation, I can’t deny the impact. We are making a difference.
The same can be said about our food waste composting program, launched in November 2020 with the help of Ashley Fitzpatrick (’22) and Brad Thacker, then a senior operations manager in Housing & Dining.
Today, Rice is a leader in Houston in food waste composting, with nearly two million pounds of food waste composted. More importantly, our partnership with Moonshot Compost has helped spark similar efforts at other universities, creating a ripple effect across the Texas Triangle.
Ashley’s composting work arose from the Rice Living Lab program, where students, faculty, and staff work together to pilot real-world sustainability solutions. It’s a program that dates back to the late 90s and is now embedded in the university’s strategic plan, Momentous.
The number of living lab projects has tripled in the last academic year, driven in part by a steering committee that is working to activate Rice’s entire enterprise around the living lab concept by breaking down barriers and maximizing impact.
The metrics help tell the story – gallons saved, pounds composted – but they are not the whole story. The true measure of success is not just what we save. It’s what we create.
We are creating a campus where ideas move quickly from classroom or lab or workspace to implementation, and where Rice becomes a proving ground for solutions that extend far beyond our hedges.
If saving 44 million gallons of water in a year, or becoming a leader in food waste composting, represents what we have already achieved, imagine what we will accomplish when we fully activate the entire university as a living lab for sustainability.
And then imagine how you can incubate ideas, remove barriers, and amplify outcomes.
That is the impact we seek – to make Rice both a sustainability leader and a catalyst for sustainability solutions that scale far beyond our campus.
If you have ideas on how we can achieve this, please connect with the Office of Sustainability at rrj@rice.edu.