New Hampshire raked in five awards from the Environmental Protection Agency this year for making healthcare less environmentally damaging.
It is the most the state has received since the Hospitals for a Healthy Environment Program began giving out awards in 2003.
The nationwide program rewards hospitals and other groups for reducing waste, conserving energy, and eliminating mercury from their facilities.
New Hampshire Public Radio’s Kerry Grens has more.
Each year hospitals generate two million tons of waste.
Laura Brannen, who runs the nationwide Hospitals for a Healthy Environment Program, calls hospitals a significant source of pollution.
Brannen: We don’t really think of healthcare institutions as being big pollutors because we don’t think of them with their discharge pipes dumping dirty water, or big, dirty smokestacks, and they’re clean facilities. But because they are 24-7 operations and because they’re largest industry sector in the United States, in order to run that big machine, they use a lot of materials, chemicals, energy, and waste.
Brannen adds that there is a lot of room for improvement.
She says hospitals spend over a half billion dollars a year managing waste—and often, they are mismanaging it.
They buy items with too much packaging or they don’t recycle enough.
Brannen: I think it’s pretty safe to say that the healthcare sector could reduce the amount of waste by about twenty percent and saving at least several million dollars in waste disposal costs across the country, or tens of millions, actually.
New Hampshire hospitals are jumping on that opportunity.
Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, for example, recycles forty percent of its waste—one of the highest rates in the country.
[sounds opening door and keys]
Near the loading docks at Concord Hospital, John Rota—the director of environmental services—walks into a windowless room filled with black plastic tubs.
Rota: This is the regulated medical waste room.
This is where all the infectious or biohazard waste goes, and all the sharps—syringes and razor blades.
Rota explains that last week the hospital switched from disposable sharps containers to reusable ones.
Rota: By switching to the new reusable sharps containers, they’re looking to save an average of just about 17,000 sharps containers that won’t be going into the waste stream.
And about six thousand dollars a year in disposal fees.
A suite of environmental initiatives won Concord Hospital an award this year through Hospitals for a Healthy Environment.
Construction on a new hospital wing is expected to include waterless urinals, recyclable rubber flooring, and rooftop gardens, all to cut back on energy use and cost.
The hospital also instituted a comprehensive recycling program and switched to purchasing items with less packaging.
Rota estimates about sixty dumpsters worth of cardboard a year have been eliminated.
Several hospitals and the Department of Environmental Services also won awards this year for work on eliminating mercury in hospitals.
Sara Johnson runs the Pollution Prevention Program at DES.
Johnson: We think we have reduced the NH hospitals have reduced mercury by 561 pounds overall, which is a huge decrease.
Johnson says ten years ago mercury was common: in blood pressure cuffs, thermostats, and was being spewed into the atmosphere by incinerated thermometers.
Now, digital alternatives have replaced the old mercury items and mercury waste no longer gets burned.
Littleton Regional Hospital, Parkland Medical Center, and Portsmouth Regional Hospital all won mercury-free awards this year.
Laura Brannen at Hospitals for a Healthy Environment says these awards are a good indication hospitals aren’t just concerned about their patients, but community health as well.
SOQ
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