Where does your facility fall on the greening spectrum?
We recently ran across an article in Healthcare Design magazine titled: “Where does your facility fall on the greening spectrum?”
Although this article focused on healthcare (regulated medical waste, preferred purchasing, etc.), they spoke about a Practice Greenhealth study and their efforts to break ‘greening’ down into specific categories. By doing this it helps the operations to identify the different areas that support and improve the ‘green’ initiatives.
Take a look at your company. Is sustainability a separate department or part of every department? Has the responsibility of sustainability fallen on one person as an addition to their ‘regular’ job? The study sites this:
Greening activity is moving beyond grassroots and departmental efforts towards a more coordinated effort and strategy. In fact, 97% of the applicant pool has a green team at their facility and 52% report the activity takes place within the Environment of Care Committee structure. Green teams provide the structure to gather baseline data, set goals, develop metrics, and through a diverse team approach and subcommittees for specific programmatic areas, work together to improve performance.
At LeanPath, we have found that the operations with Green Teams have higher success rates. More people are involved, there is better ‘buy-in’ from all levels of staff and management, and everyone shares in the success of each accomplishment. Gathering baseline data and setting goals helps to make everyone aware of the challenges. We often see shocked faces when we report the actual pounds and dollars of an operations food waste. The staff knows they aren’t purposely wasting food, but to see the waste in ‘black and white’, printed on a page really brings the challenge into the light. Setting and achieving goals in a team dynamic also allows you to get many different solutions to one problem.
Another great reason to use a team approach for sustainability is to gather data on the life cycle of a product. See the example below:
With an increased focus on waste prevention and life cycle analysis, some waste prevention activities are harder to capture. Cleveland Clinic, for example, boasts an over 25% recycling rate, which recently dipped as they conducted life cycle computing and electronics, which reduced the amount of computer “waste” generated altogether. All computers now go back to the manufacturer for refurbish, reuse, and redeployment. So while one may be impressed by hefty recycling rates, waste prevention activities deserve mention and can sometimes get lost in the numbers. This is why total waste generation should be tracked to reflect waste prevention successes.
An important goal for any type of organization: tracking total waste generation to reflect waste prevention successes. We encourage everyone to work on waste reduction as the first step. Purchasing less, producing less – leads to less waste.
Practice Greenhealth has just started tracking data this way, but they intend to continue tracking this data. This long term tracking will help the industry to see how sustainability grows and trends over a long period. More trend information should be available after the 2010 Environmental Excellence Awards to be presented at CleanMed 2010 in Baltimore Maryland, May 11-13.
Web links:
- CleanMed: http://www.cleanmed.org
- Green Guide for Health Care: http://www.gghc.org
- Global Health and Safety Initiative: http://www.globalhealthsafety.org
- Health Care Without Harm: http://www.noharm.org
- Practice Greenhealth: http://www.practicegreenhealth.org
- The Center for Health Design: http://www.health design.org
