Houston Methodist The Woodlands Hospital started a sustainability plan in May 2022 under the direction of Jason Fischer, the hospital's director of the office of sustainability, and Paul Stege, director of environmental services, that included launching a small-scale pilot program this August for composting and a partnership with Interfaith of The Woodlands.

The overview

Composting, according to the Natural Resource Defense Council, is the process of recycling food and organic matter into a valuable fertilizer that can enrich soil and plants. The benefits of composting include reducing waste, cutting emissions from landfills, improving soil health and conserving water.

Stege said Houston Methodist The Woodlands is the first hospital in the Greater Houston area to create a composting program, and a year into the process, the hospital has already deferred over 101,455 pounds of food from landfills as of September, which is the equivalent of:
  • Planting 5,183 trees
  • Undriving 78,036 miles
  • Saving 68,576 pounds of carbon dioxide
Stege said the compost the hospital diverts goes to Nature's Way Resources, a local landscaping supply store in Conroe. After a few months, he said the sustainability office learned that the nonprofit food bank, Interfaith of The Woodlands, had been purchasing the compost from Nature's Way to use in its community donations garden known as Veggie Village.

Stege and Fischer said they decided to form a partnership with Interfaith to help the nonprofit cultivate food for their community.


"It started with good intentions to do our part for the environment, but it became this big self-sustaining thing that we didn't intend for it to be," Stege said. "Jason and I have always had the idea that if you do the right thing upfront ... good things follow that."

What's next

The composting program has since expanded to the Houston Methodist locations in Sugar Land and Willowbrook, Fischer said. The new sustainability office is also looking to design its first solar unit, create rooftop gardens and launch a green ICU initiative, Fischer said.