Call for Climate Change Resiliency Mentoring!

The Climate Change Resiliency Mentoring Project is a program offered by the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care that provides tools, resources, and guidance for facilities to evaluate and increase their resiliency to climate change impacts. 

Participation is FREE. Benefits include

• Access to Canada’s Health Care Climate Change Resiliency Toolkit and formal, structured support.
• Identification of facility’s current climate change risks
• Provision of a ‘Facilitators slide deck’ that Resiliency Champions can use in their own facility to explain the initiative to their team and bring attention to resiliency as strategic priority within the organisation.
• Support evaluating relevant facility data.
• Peer learning group support that will lead to sharing climate change resiliency preventative actions, initiatives, best practices, and toolkit questions.
• And more!

Interested facilities should contact Kent at kent@greenhealthcare.ca. The introductory webinar will be held in the next 2 weeks, full agenda to follow shortly.

Sage Journals Healthcare Management Forum issue with a special focus on sustainability is now available! Notable articles include: 

How One Community is Educating its Residents on Proper Disposal of Home Medical Waste. When household medical waste—from sharps and tubing to IV bags—is improperly disposed of in recycling containers, it slows the work at materials recovery facilities (MRFs) and can put workers’ health in jeopardy.

Recently motivated by medical waste thrown into residential recycling carts, the Region of Peel, which provides waste management services in the cities of Brampton and Mississauga and in the Town of Caledon, in Ontario, Canada, reached out to remind its 1.4 million residents what constitutes household medical waste and sharps and how they need to properly dispose of them. Read more.

Average U.S. Hospital Pays $3/Square Foot for Energy.  Every year since 1995, G/BA has compiled data for its annual  Hospital Energy and Water Benchmarking Survey. Hospitals are invited to participate in the survey by submitting responses to a short list of questions regarding their usage of electricity, natural gas, oil, purchased steam, purchased chilled water, and domestic water/sewer.

Click here for the charts from the 2016 survey (2015 data). Charts depicting long-term trends are available here. 

Read the Part 1 analysis of the 2016 survey, covering use and costs for electricity and fossil fuels (2015 data) or Part 2 analysis, covering water/sewer, carbon footprint, costs per bed, and benchmarking resources (2015 data).

Leading the Way Toward Green, Climate-Smart Health Care. Global Green and Healthy Hospitals (GGHH) has announced the worldwide release of its 2016 Annual Progress Report. The report highlights key achievements, including the 2020 Health Care Climate Challenge, new membership milestones, and the release of the Hippocrates data Centre - the first international platform for the health sector to measure actions towards reducing its environmental footprint. It also provides a view of goals and targets for the year to come.

New Device Combines Steam Sterilization with a Grinder for Onsite Medical Waste Treatment. Regulated medical waste (RMW) is typically stored onsite at the hospital, clinic or facility from which it originated, and hauled away by trucks for incineration and disposal. This process is strictly regulated and requires that detailed records be kept by the hospital or facility, hauling company and incinerator. With so many potential touch points, this method can pose a risk to the personnel handling the infectious medical waste and can have serious environmental repercussions as the waste is eventually disposed of through incineration. Sterilis LLC has developed a device that combines steam sterilization with a grinder, allowing it to be treated on-site and at point-of-care in about 60 minutes and requiring no dedicated plumbing, drainage, or fixtures. Read more about this safer and more environmentally friendly process here.

Protecting world’s most vulnerable populations from climate change. Many lessons for addressing the effects of climate change were shared throughout the course of the  Climate & Health Meeting, held Feb. 16 at the Carter Center in Atlanta, and one panel discussed ways we can find solutions from a less obvious source: low- and middle-income countries. Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, who leads the climate change and health team within the World Health Organization’ Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health told conference attendees that they were “not alone” in this fight and that WHO is committed to working with global partners to address climate change. Read more.

The Canadian Nursing Students’ Association (CNSA) is pleased to announce the launch of its new Environmental Stewardship Award worth $750. This is an opportunity for a Canadian nursing student to be honoured for the advocacy work they have done in promoting environmental stewardship practice as related to their education, practice and future profession.