"Be not simply good, be good for something". -Henry David Thoreau
Ontario Green Health Care Award Webinars
Congratulations to all the 110 sites that submitted data and received scorecards for the 2017 Green Hospital Scorecard. The upcoming Ontario Green Health Care Award webinars will feature presentations from top performing non-accute, academic, community and small hospitals. This FREE webinar will include awards in energy, waste, water and Green Hospital of the Year from each peer group.

Stay tuned for the webinar dates!
Thank you to the sponsors of the Ontario Green Health Care Awards
Green Operating Room Survey
Are you a health care facility? If so, we want to hear from you! We are currently conducting a survey to find out what health care facilities in Ontario are doing to green their operating rooms. The goal of this survey is to get a baseline understanding of where you are on your greening journey so that we can support you with tools and resources that will facilitate your success! For more information on completing the survey, and your chance to win a $25 Canadian Tire gift card, please contact Linxi at   linxi@greenhealthcare.ca.
CCGHC at the Chemicals Management Plan (CMP) Stakeholder Advisory Council and Multi-Stakeholder Workshop
Sonja Janousek of Fraser Health in BC represented the CCGHC at the recent Chemicals Management Plan (CMP) Stakeholder Advisory Council and Multi-Stakeholder Workshop as a delegate for the Canadian Network for Human Health & Environment (CNHHE). At these meetings, participants received an update on the Government of Canada's (GoC) chemical assessment and management activities to 2020 and beyond, impacts on vulnerable populations, as well as work being undertaken to address Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals. There were also opportunities to comment on issues related to the type of information disseminated by the GoC in relation to chemical assessments, new substances, international collaboration, transparency, scientific research methods and partnerships.
For more information, contact  sonja.janousek@fraserhealth.ca
Six Tips For A Green Cleaning Program
For facility executives, supporting a green cleaning initiative requires a deeper understanding of what successful green cleaning means and how to achieve it. While there are many facets to green cleaning, it often refers to an organized effort that protects human health and the environment by reducing toxicity, waste, and exposure to harmful substances.

Click here to read the full article.
Coalition Exhibits at CHES Ontario in Collingwood 
Thank you CHES Ontario for providing the opportunity for the Coalition to exhibit at last week's hospital engineering conference in Collingwood. The conference "Targeting Challenges" had an amazing roster of expert speakers on topics including water conservation and ensuring domestic water safety, optimizing operational savings and empowering energy conservation, and changes to medical gas standards. Thanks also to the Ontario Trillium Foundation for supporting the Coalition's climate change resiliency mentoring. 
Learn more about CHES and the work of the Ontario Chapter here.
How to Measurably Improve Existing Buildings' Energy, Water, and Waste Impacts
Buildings are responsible for a   third of harmful greenhouse gas   (GHG) pollution from U.S. electricity use, with that percentage rising dramatically in urban centers. Buildings account for  approximately 70 percent of Chicago's GHG emissions.  Moreover, many buildings use more energy than they need to, which is unnecessarily expensive and damaging to the environment.

Read the full article here .
Coalition’s Green Health Leaders Present at the National Health Leadership National Conference
On June 4th in St. John's Newfoundland,  Dr. Courtney Howard (Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment)  and  Neil Ritchie (Green Health Leaders Initiative (GHLI))  led a session at the National Health Leadership Conference. The session titled "Emerging Challenges for Health and Health Care with Climate Change" showed leaders in health care that climate change has already impacted the health of Canadians and health care infrastructure. Dr. Howard and Mr. Ritchie reviewed how the Canadian health system is currently responding with a discussion of areas of improvement, and assisted leaders by presenting a clear path forward by building on current and new policies. Ritchie described the session as a "great opportunity for health care professionals and leaders to gain an awareness of climate change impacts while enabling them to take immediate action within their organisations and facilities".
If you want to learn more about the Green Health Leaders Initiative follow this link .
Hospitals help to pave the way for new resilient design standard
Two hospitals in the US are piloting a new USGBC standard designed to help create sustainable communities. RELi is a consensus standard that was published in 2014 by the Institute for Market Transformation to Sustainability and its Capital Markets Partnership coalition. It provides an integrative process to create resilient facilities and communities. Last fall, it was adopted by Green Business Certification Inc. (GBCI) and its partner the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). The standard’s original creators and USGBC are refining the standard and scaling it to become an international rating system, much like USGBC’s LEED rating system. 

Read the full article here .
How Climate Changed-Fueled “Mega Droughts” Could Harm Human Health
The Dust Bowl in the 1930s was one of the worst environmental disasters of the 20th century. Intense dust storms relentlessly pounded the southern Great Plains of the United States, wreaking severe ecological damage, forcing  2.5 million people to leave the region  and claiming unnumbered lives, mainly from  “dust pneumonia.”

Click here to read more.
Hospitals Seek Recycling Solutions for Medical Plastics
Medical-grade plastics often are stigmatized in recycling. The assumption among many recyclers that clinical plastics are harder to process due to contamination and the nature of the materials, which often use both rigid and nonrigid plastics in one package, has made it difficult for many hospitals to find alternatives to landfills.

Learn more about plastics in hospitals here .
Green Building Award for Humber River Hospital and Partners
When  Humber River Hospital  (HRH) opened its doors near Keele and the 401 in 2015, the massive facility became North America’s first fully digital hospital. Designed by  HDR Architects  and built by  PCL , the 14-storey, 1.8 million square foot hospital was thoughtfully designed to meet the evolving needs of health care, while also taking energy efficiency into account to reduce operating costs and the site's carbon footprint in an effort to achieve LEED® Gold status. 2017 award winners and finalists can be found here .

Read the full article here .
Updates from Coalition's Summer Student
Summer student Zoe West is working alongside Dr. Curtis Lavoie in the Emergency Department at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) to drive sustainability and resiliency initiatives forward. Zoe is conducting interviews with staff and department leads in an effort to complete the Coalition’s Health Care Facility Climate Change Resiliency Checklist in the coming weeks, and generating a Climate Change Impacts Fact Sheet outlining potential climate risks CHEO and Ottawa residents may face.
CAEM 2018 Conference & Trade Show
Date: September 9-11, 2018
Location: Sheraton Toronto Airport Hotel and Conference Centre

Featured Speakers: Inspiring Guest Speakers, Leading Edge Education, Innovative Infection Control and Environmental Exhibitors, and Endless Networking Opportunities!
CHES 2018 National Conference
Smarter Infrastructure for Enhanced Patient Outcomes
Date: September 16-18, 2018
Location: St. John's Convention Centre - St John's, Newfoundland
 

Don't forget to book your booth for the CHES 2018 National Conference in St. John's NL, September 16-18, 2018.  
Space is limited in 2018 so reserve your booth today (if you have not already done so)! 

Follow this link to submit contract for exhibit space

Monday Program Highlights:
  • Keynote Address - Team Broken Earth- Sponsored by Honeywell
  • Build it Right Now to Save Lives in the Future
  • When Risk becomes a Reality; Behind the scenes of an Aspergillus Investigation
  • The analysis, business case, and Implementation of District Cooling Solutions at Toronto General Hospital
  • Upping the Game- How the new edition of Z8000 is shaping health care design for the next decade 
  • Impacting Patient Care by Optimizing Operations & Reducing Energy Usage
  • Engineered Infection Prevention
  • How Smart Robots Improve Logistics for Better Patient Outcomes

Tuesday Program Highlights:
  • Maximizing Emergency Department Capacity By Design: New Workflow + Flexible Environments
  • Primary Healthcare Infrastructure Design Guide: Patient Focused Design Supporting Collaborative Care Teams
  • Operating Room Relative Humidity Control using Liquid Desicant Dehumidification Technology
  • 5 Steps to a Successful Hospital Construction Project
  • Intelligent Drains: Addressing HAI with Hand Hygiene Sink Drainset Technology
  • St. Michael's Hospital: The Application of Digital Healthcare Technology into an existing Healthcare Expansion Project.
  • Relationship Between Indoor Air Parameters and occupant health. Roles of the Microbiome of the built Environment
Canadian Healthcare Infrastructure East
Date: October 24-25, 2018
Location: Toronto Airport West Hotel (soon-to-be DoubleTree by Hilton), Toronto, ON

The 2nd Annual Canadian Healthcare Infrastructure East provides you with the opportunity to connect with senior stakeholders in healthcare infrastructure design, build and management. Learn how to transition your hospital projects from concept to long-term successes.
If you have inspirational greening stories or photos to share with Green Digest readers, please send them to Dan at dan@greenhealthcare.ca
Some articles referred to in the Digest make reference to services and/or product offerings from specific suppliers. The CCGHC recommends that readers research the service and product offerings available through a wider range of suppliers for comparison purposes and in keeping with public sector purchasing guidelines. These articles should not be interpreted as an endorsement of any product or service.