Skip to contents
In This Issue:
In honor of national Earth Day on April 22, BWH collected old cell phones and small electronics for recycling and tested BWHers' "green" knowledge with trivia questions and games outside the Shop on the Pike.
Earth Day is an opportunity to demonstrate support for environmental protection, with events centered on eco-friendliness all over the world. On this day and year-round, BWH is committed to environmental responsibility and sustainability.
Healthier Hospitals Initiative
Along with other Partners hospitals and 900 hospitals nationwide, BWH recently joined the Healthier Hospitals Initiative (HHI), a national campaign to improve environmental health and sustainability in health care. The initiative challenges health care institutions to provide healthier foods for patients, families and employees, engage leadership around "going green," increase recycling, use safer cleaning products, decrease waste and commit to more energy-efficient heating and cooling systems, among other goals. The three-year campaign, which began in 2012, is helping hospitals and health care systems across the U.S. make a positive impact.
Recycling and Eco-Friendly Products
In addition to the Brigham Building for the Future, which, when complete, will be LEED gold-certified and will enable BWH to make enough electricity to power 80 percent of the building and Shapiro Center's electrical needs, BWH has several other energy milestones to celebrate.
In 2012, BWH began recycling needle liners and sharps containers, products that had previously been incinerated after a single use. Now these materials can safely be used more than 600 times, generating an estimated cost savings of between $100,000 and $150,000 per year and leading to the removal of more than 112,000 pounds of plastics annually from landfills. BWH also uses only green cleaning products and environmentally friendly paint across its campus.
"We're always looking for alternative products that are better for the environment," said George Player, director of Engineering.
BWH Environmental Services is working in conjunction with medical waste disposal company Stericycle to eliminate misuse of the Biohazard bins, or red bags, in patient rooms, and in turn reduce medical waste output. The department is also working to recycle blue wraps from BWH operating rooms, which many people do not know are recyclable.
"Our goal is to be considered a best practice hospital," said Luis Soto, director of Central Transport and Environmental Services. "We have staff who care and the tools to do it, so there is nothing holding us back."
Reducing Energy
BWH has also converted to LED lighting-replacing light bulbs and fixtures and installing motion light switches-resulting in a 2-percent reduction in electricity usage in the past year. The hospital has installed variable frequency drives on many legacy air handling and pump systems, which adjust energy usage based on time of day and building occupancy.
Additionally, BWH reevaluated the LEED silver-certified Shapiro Center a few years ago to determine whether its environmental footprint could be reduced further.
"Working closely with operating room staff, Infection Control, Environmental Affairs and others, we were able to identify and implement new building operating strategies that helped us reduce energy use without affecting comfort conditions for patients and staff," said Jim Turner, utilities manager for BWH. "In essence, the building operations are now much more closely tailored to the exact usage and occupancy patterns of the building."
The project reduced BWH's carbon dioxide emissions by more than 1 million pounds of carbon dioxide per year, and has resulted in energy savings of close to $33,000-the equivalent of 37,000 gallons of fuel oil per year, or enough to drive a Volkswagen Beetle 72 times around the globe. These cost savings and others help to reduce the cost of delivering care by shrinking the hospital's operating costs, while reducing the hospital's ecological footprint.