Blog
December 2013
Sustainability Mythbusters: Debunking the Sustainability Myths
Sustainability also leads to gains in efficiency that ultimately results in cost savings. Hospitals that invest between $100,000 and $1 million in saving energy, for [...]
Wharton IGEL Partners with Johnson & Johnson to Help Healthcare Organizations Make the Case for Sustainability
“The high cost of healthcare today is concerning, and is one reason why sustainability is absolutely essential, yet many organizations are still trying to rally [...]
Sterilmed and Stryker Sustainability Solutions Named as “Sustainable Resources” in Greening Healthcare Facilities
Sterilmed Single-Use Medical Device Reprocessing and Recycling Sterilmed helps hospitals conserve health care resources and deliver maximum cost savings through safe, single-use device reprocessing. Sterilmed’s [...]
November 2013
Measure of Success: The Greenhealth Tracker aids the Veterans Health Administration’s goal to reduce waste by 2015
Practice Greenhealth reports that, “As the largest consumer of energy in the U.S. economy, the Federal government can and should lead by example when it [...]
Going beyond the expected at Yale-New Haven Hospital
Practice Greenhealth reports, that in the United States, health care facilities produce roughly 12 million pounds of trash that gets transported to landfills on a [...]
AHE launches a environmental sustainability certificate program
Healthcare Facilities Today reports that the Association for the Healthcare Environment (AHE) has launched a new certificate program to acknowledge the environment and ecological sustainability efforts of [...]
How sustainability leadership drives innovation
The business case for sustainability is a well-worn litany of benefits, both tangible and intangible: cutting costs, improving quality, attracting and retaining talent and enhancing [...]
Conference Announcement: Metrics that Matter, Messages that Motivate – Making the Right Case for Sustainability in Healthcare
Wednesday, December 4, 2013 9:00am to 2:00PM EST Philadelphia, PA Hosted by: Wharton IGEL, Johnson & Johnson Event Title: Metrics that Matter, Messages that Motivate Event Theme: Making the [...]
Nurses Take the Temperature of a Changing Climate
Public dialogue has also begun to converge on the role of hospitals and clinicians in protecting public health from global warming. Just in the past [...]
October 2013
Webinar Announcement: Healthier Hospitals Initiative – Less Waste: Red Bag Waste Reduction
November 18, 2013 - 3:00 - 4:00pm EST Everyone knows healthcare can be a messy business – with hospitals generating approximately 5.9 million tons of [...]
Going green doesn’t have to mean seeing red in managing waste
As hospitals and healthcare systems struggle with growing costs, shrinking revenues and pressures to reduce their environmental footprints, there is a tremendous opportunity for them [...]
Lessons for Health Care in a Changing Climate
A year after Sandy, what have we learned? At a community health level, we learned that the loss of 15 percent of the total bed [...]
Greening our hospitals
Healthcare Without Harm currently assists hospitals and health systems in 53 countries reduce their negative impact on the environment. They speak on how there is some [...]
Philippine Hospitals Encouraged to Go Green
Hospitals in the Philippines are being encouraged to “go green” -- become environment-friendly as they are people-friendly. But high costs are discouraging a lot of [...]
Reflections from Liberia: Considering Costs of Care Should Be a Problem For More Than Just the Poor
For many physicians trained in the United States, costs are generally one of the last things considered in medical decision-making. Throughout medical school and residency, [...]
Cost Savings Right Under Our Noses
As deliberations over how to make healthcare more cost-effective continue to play out in forums across the country -- from the U.S. Congress to state [...]
How to prevent waste and create recycling opportunities.
Hospitals generate, on average, over 30 pounds of waste per bed, per day, based on the Practice Greenhealth Sustainability Benchmark Report. Unlike in a teenager’s [...]
Inova Fairfax Medical Campus Named One of Greenest
The Falls Church Patch reports that Inova Fairfax Medical Campus has been named one of the "50 Greenest Hospitals in America" by Becker’s Hospital Review, [...]
September 2013
Business owners and facility managers go green to save green
Implementing certain green technologies that reduce water use, improve energy efficiency and increase sustainability requires an initial investment, but many facility managers and business owners [...]
Vermont Hospitals Commit to a Healthier Future with the First Statewide Enrollment in the Healthier Hospitals Initiative
The Healthier Hospitals Initiative (HHI), Vermont Association of Hospitals and Health Systems (VAHHS) and Efficiency Vermont announced today that Vermont is the first state to [...]