How healthy is your hospital? Hospitals
are tremendous producers of toxins, including mercury and excess
pharmaceuticals, as well as solid and hazardous wastes.
“In healthcare, the footprint we’re
leaving behind directly impacts our health,” points out Mary Daubach-Larsen,
director of material operations and chairman of the Green LEEDers Task Force at
Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Ill.
Many hospitals are taking steps to
reduce that footprint.
It’s
Easy Being Green
Lutheran General has had great
success with the green team model.
A 617-bed teaching, research, and
tertiary care hospital and Level 1 trauma center, Lutheran General is one of
the largest hospitals in the Chicago area. Under the leadership of
Daubach-Larsen, the hospital’s Green LEEDers Task Force has made great strides
in several areas, earning Lutheran General a national 2006 Partners in Change
award from Hospitals for a Healthy Environment (H2E).
“We’ve been recycling for more than
five years,” says Daubach-Larsen. Like most hospitals that make an
environmental commitment, Lutheran General began its efforts with guidance from
H2E (www.h2e-online.org), a nonprofit
group founded by the American Hospital Association, the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency, Health Care Without Harm, and the American Nurses
Association.
“H2E’s mission is to green the
entire healthcare sector,” says Laura Brannen, executive director of H2E. “We
focus on reducing waste, toxic chemicals, and mercury.” An easy and obvious
place to start an environmental effort is by reducing the amount of waste your
hospital produces.
About
the Green Team
An effective hospital green team
should include members from multiple departments, to ensure that new
environmentally friendly practices, such as using recycling bins for specific
waste materials or purchasing “green” cleansers, are taught to all applicable
staff and followed by all necessary departments.
“A traditional green team brings together
people from a variety of backgrounds,” says Brannen. Catholic Healthcare West
(CHW), which made a commitment to environmentally friendly practices in 1996,
has an environmental action committee at each of its 40 hospitals.
An easy and obvious place to start
an environmental effort is by reducing the amount of waste your hospital
produces.
“It makes sense to start with waste
and move on from there,” advises Daubach-Larsen of starting a Green Team
effort. “H2E offers a waste management template to help you gather data on your
waste streams. “Improve your relationship with your waste vendor,” advises
Daubach-Larsen. Beyond reducing waste, hospitals can make many environmental
improvements—it’s simply a matter of choosing priorities. In addition to waste
and recycling, H2E helps hospitals address a wide variety of environmental
issues. “We’ve moved on to environmentally friendly purchasing, green building,
safer material choices, and energy efficiency,” says Brannen.
One
area many green hospitals are beginning to watch closely is their purchasing,
including their vendors. “We’re members of a group purchasing company that has
green management strategies,” says Daubach-Larsen. “If you’re not designing a
green building before you break ground, you’re behind the times,” says Brannen.
Save the Environment=Save Money
Are green practices too expensive
for some hospitals? “Reducing solid waste and increasing recycling can save
money,” she points out. “Our numbers of hazardous waste, or ‘red bag waste,’
are very low compared to other hospitals—it costs more to dispose of this
waste.”
Green
Hospitalists?
Where do hospitalists and other
physicians fit into the green team picture? “There are hospitalists [who] get
the relationships between their hospital[s] and the environment,” says
Daubach-Larsen. While green team leadership tends to fall on hospital operations
staff, physicians can provide tremendous support simply by advocating with
hospital leadership. “Executive sponsorship is key,” says Daubach-Larsen. Has
your hospital made a commitment to reduce waste or otherwise reduce its
footprint on the environment?
