Rice University
EN-5: Outreach Campaign

The Green Dorm Initiative (GDI) is a three-week program that encourages Rice undergraduate students (through incentives and prizes) to adopt sustainable lifestyles in their dorm rooms. The event is held and organized by the EcoReps every year to promote sustainable living within each of the eleven residential colleges. The GDI is a three-week event with each week focusing on a certain environmental or sustainable “theme,” namely (1) water and energy, (2) wellness, and (3) waste. Each week, an email is sent to participants with a link to a Google Form. Participants are expected to fill out short surveys daily which ask them to log certain aspects of their day that pertain to the week’s theme. They also have a week-long challenge to undergo. For example, during week 1, daily topics included natural lighting, water use, vampire power, carbon footprint, and biking/walking. The week-long challenge encouraged participants to shower under four minutes today. During week 2, daily topics included unsafe chemicals in products, local food and the Rice Farmer's Market, getting outside, building community, and vegetarianism. The week-long challenge encouraged participants to cut back on their red meat consumption. During week 3, daily topics included food waste, recycling, not using disposable water bottles, electronic waste, and one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. The week-long challenge encouraged participants to not send anything to the landfill. In order to incentivize students to contribute to the GDI, prizes are rewarded to those who participate as well as to the college that does the best at the end of each week.

Although there is no explicit data that is measured during the GDI, it is known that during the for 2014 competition, approximately 10 percent of all on-campus students participated in the event by tracking environmental and sustainability related measures, namely their water and energy consumption, as well as their waste production. Participation has grown since then. Thus, the outstanding participation in the Green Dorm Initiative demonstrates that the campaign led to a measurable, positive impact on the campus’ sustainability performance and awareness.

Rice’s annual FREE-cycling event is a popular and useful campaign encouraging faculty and staff to donate or swap unneeded or unused office supplies. The event occurs on the first or second day of the fall semester, and is open to students, faculty, and staff. Offices and departments across campus can donate items such as binders, calculators, envelopes, file folders, paper products, staplers and toner. During the event, bins are also available for dead batteries, dead cellphones, empty toner and ink cartridges, bubble wrap, packing peanuts and electronics. Staff volunteer to run the event, and all of the items are free. Broken equipment is kept separate, so that an environmental health and safety company can come pick up the equipment and recycle it.

The campaign was started in 2009, and it continues to grow every year. It is a chance for departments to get rid of what they do not need and pick up what they do. This saves departments money and reduces trash. Although there are no concrete numbers of items "free-cycled", a photograph of some of the items have been attached in the Optional Fields section.

Another notable outreach campaigns at Rice are its bike safety campaign aimed at students, faculty and staff. In recent years, Rice has become very focused on ensuring the safety and responsibility of the biking community, both on and off-campus. Specifically in 2009, Rice had a committee dedicated to bicycle safety that wrote and compiled a document offering recommendations to improve bicycle and pedestrian safety on campus. Since then, Rice has implemented a webpage dedicated to “Bikes at Rice” that offers information on riding responsibly, following biking safety rules, registering bicycles with the Rice University Police Department (RUPD), respecting pedestrians, and following protocol for stolen bicycles. The University also created a video to encourage students to ride responsibly. The video discusses specific safety measures that should be taken by cyclists on campus, as well as information on how to register a bike with RUPD. In general, bike safety remains a prominent concern at the University. A recent 2014 article was published in the Rice University News & Media reminding students of the importance of heightened awareness and vigilance while riding both on and off Rice’s campus.

Bikes at Rice websited: http://www.rice.edu/bikesatrice/index.shtml Article about biking: http://news.rice.edu/2014/02/24/cyclists-pedestrians-reminded-to-be-cautious-and-courteous/ Bike safety committee document: http://www.rice.edu/bikesatrice/documents/Bicycle%20Safety%20Committee_report_foot_markBW.pdf FREE-cycling: http://news.rice.edu/2013/08/09/annual-free-cycling-office-supply-swap-set-for-aug-27/