Environmental Commission

Mission Statement:

In line with the mission of the Student Association, the Environmental Commission hopes to provide every student with the resources to create and contribute to environmental initiatives that benefit the Rice community. The Commission will collaborate with other sustainability-oriented student organizations and administrators to improve the environmental wellbeing of Rice's campus and its residents. They will support and inspire each other in their efforts and advocate for environmental improvements through actionable projects, initiatives, and policies.

Proposed Initiatives for 2024-2025: 

Our main role is to oversee commission members’ projects, however, if no substantive ones are pursued we will refer to this list and delegate different tasks to members/check in on their process.

• We hope to correspond with Moonshot Composting and Ecoreps to increase awareness around Composting at Rice. 

• Work on implementing campus-wide composting presentations during O-Week/NS orientations

• We hope to enrich the job fair with more diverse and renewable energy companies in addition to the ones we already have

• Include more interdisciplinary environmental jobs rather than solely STEM. Take inspiration from ENST and Environmental Science websites/connect with the faculty prior to these events. 

• We hope to expand collaboration with different environmental clubs and organizations (in collaborative, campus-wide events and projects)

• Rice Wildlife Conservation Club, Rice Climate Alliance, ACC, etc,.

• We hope to install rain barrels for residential gardens and other usages

• We hope to install mini solar-powered outdoor pathway lights

• We hope to improve communication with the Office of Sustainability 

• We hope to conduct more eco-friendly craft events, such as flower presses, reusable water bottle decoration activities, room decoration with sustainable materials (old magazines), pot planting

• And finally, we hope to create volunteering days with local environmental nonprofits and beach cleanups. Specifically a Tree-planting one (https://www.treesforhouston.org/volunteer)

Goal:

Our goal is to complete our proposed initiatives. Ideally, those that we are not able to firmly implement will lay the foundation for the future commission chairs and members. We hope to establish the more communicative aspects of our initiatives within the fall semester and hopefully install at least one tangible project by the spring. We also hope to provide a warm and welcoming environment for our commission members to pursue their own projects and establish a community within the sustainability sphere at Rice.