A Message from the COO

“Being Green- Environmentally Friendly Best Practices”

I recently had the privilege of attending the National Health Leadership Conference in Vancouver, B.C. It was a great opportunity to connect with health leaders and hear about exciting initiatives underway in health care across the country. I attended a particularly interesting session on “green” health care that was very informative and thought provoking. The speaker was from the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care and talked about the work the Coalition does in helping health care facilities (and organizations) with the implementation of green health care best practices and to become better equipped to deal with the growing demands placed on health facilities to be environmentally responsible. The Coalition has been in place since 2000 and has had a significant impact on the greening of the Canadian health care landscape.

There are a number of areas that organizations need to focus on in terms of “green practices”:

1. Sustainable Facilities – health care facilities are intensive users of energy and water which contributes to a large overall carbon footprint. It is important to think about strategies for reducing our carbon footprint and these conversations are occurring as we embark on construction of our new buildings.
2. Water Conservation – health care facilities are large users of water. When we do not use water efficiently or productively, this drives up costs. As well, the cumulative demand for water results in competition for locally available water supplies and can threaten aquatic ecosystems.
3. Environmentally Preferable Purchasing – What products we purchase and how we purchase them can impact the environment. When we adopt environmentally preferable purchasing we purchase goods and services whose environmental impacts have been analyzed and determined to be less harmful to the environment. We currently undertake a number of product trials and this is one aspect that we look at.

These are just a few of the areas that require focus – there are others such as waste management and healthy and sustainable foods; these too, are areas where we need to think about “green” practices.

Perhaps the most important message of the presentation was that both leaders and staff within an organization need to be committed to this concept. This commitment is essential if we are to achieve environmental improvement and sustainability within the health sector. At Bethany we are already doing a number of things to support the environment but we need to support each other to do more. I would encourage you to bring forward any ideas or thoughts you have about this; it is so important on our journey to implement and integrate environmentally responsible practices into the delivery of care.

Regards,

– Nancy