As seen in Continental Magazine.

For Hackensack University Medical Center (HUMC) in New Jersey, the journey toward a greener existence started in 2002 with a question. Deirdre Imus, a hospital benefactor and child health advocate, asked CEO and president John P. Ferguson what kind of cleaning products the hospital was using.

He didn’t know. Imus, who has campaigned against the use of environmental toxins, suggested the hospital switch to nontoxic cleaning products. According to Suzen Heeley, HUMC’s director of design and construction, that was just the first of many green initiatives at the 781-bed facility in Bergen County, N.J.
In the six years since, the center has built a new 300,000-square-foot women’s and children’s pavilion that meets the U.S. Green Building Council’s guidelines for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). Structural steel and metal decking used in the facility are 88 percent recycled. The pavilion also features cotton insulation made from recycled denim jeans, eliminating the risks from the formaldehyde sometimes found in conventional fiberglass insulation. The building’s rubber floors are free of polyvinyl chlorides, which means they require only damp mopping instead of repeated waxing and stripping with toxic chemicals.

“We’re a health care provider,” Heeley says. “It’s only logical we provide the healthiest environment available not only for our patients, but for everyone who uses our space.”

Hackensack is just one of an increasing number of hospitals that have taken a sharp green turn in recent years, transforming their facilities in ways that are good not only for the environment, but also for patients and staff. Practice Greenhealth (formerly known as Hospitals for a Healthy Environment) — a nonprofit founded by the American Hospital Association, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the American Nurses Association, and Health Care Without Harm — partners with more than 7,500 facilities, including nearly 1,700 hospitals, 3,900 clinics, and 950 nursing homes, that all face their own individual challenges on the road to sustainability.

Turns for the Better
Like HUMC, Kaiser Permanente has put an emphasis on greener building. The largest nonprofit health care system in the United States, Kaiser is spending $24 billion on 4,000 construction projects between now and 2014, all of which follow the company’s environmentally friendly design standards. For example, a medical center slated to open later this year in Modesto, Calif., features a roof covered with native plants and permeable paving materials that filter rainwater. The building also uses solar panels that earned Kaiser a rebate from Pacific Gas and Electric Co., and it fully recirculates air from outside. Rooms were designed to be ergonomic and energy efficient, with sensors that turn off lights when a room is vacant.

In a similar vein, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) is working with a $5 million green action fund to complete environmental initiatives across its 20-hospital system. According to Allison Robinson, director of environmental initiatives, most of UPMC’s major new building projects are likely to be LEED certified.

“We know it will cost us a little more up front,” she says. “But in the long run there will be a payback. Not only in terms of costs, but we should have a reduced need for health care services. We should have fewer asthmatic attacks, fewer heart attacks. With improved air quality [and] improved water quality, we should have a healthier Earth.”

Green initiatives at health care facilities go beyond structural changes. At HUMC, some medical devices are mercury-free, organic foods are offered at meals, and patients wear organic and green cotton processed without chemicals. The hospital also sends new mothers home with a “Greening Your Baby” kit, including a brochure that describes how they can create a cleaner, safer environment for their children.

“We look at it holistically,” Heeley says. “We have a sustainable-hospital committee with a variety of multidisciplinary representatives throughout the hospital who come together and talk about what can be done in their particular areas.”

For its part, Kaiser has reduced mercury usage to the point where all its facilities are virtually mercury-free. The company also supports 38 farmers’ markets on its grounds across the country and uses locally grown food in its Northern California facilities. Kaiser’s environmental efforts, launched early in this decade, have been recognized with numerous awards from Practice Greenhealth. “This is really built into our DNA,” says Christine Malcolm, Kaiser’s senior vice president for hospital strategy and national facilities.

Many facilities, like Children’s Hospital & Regional Medical Center in Seattle, also consider recycling a big part of the greening process. Mitch Birchfield, the hospital’s environmental services director and hazardous materials manager, says Children’s looks hard at being green in all areas of operation — not bringing in waste to begin with, and recycling all reusable materials. The hospital has been collaborating with a local compost company for the past year to reduce the amount of waste it sends to landfills; the company then sells the resulting compost back to the hospital to use for its own landscaping. By composting food waste, the hospital also saves $18,000 a year because its kitchens no longer need garbage disposals.

Obstacles to Change
Despite the glut of green products and services now available to consumers, going green still presents challenges for institutions. Malcolm says that when Kaiser decided to eliminate vinyl backing from its carpeting, the necessary product didn’t exist. A vendor eventually developed a carpet using a coating made from recycled car safety glass.

“We believe it will take an enormous amount of economic pressure to get those kinds of products for every element of our buildings,” Malcolm adds. “It’s the right thing to do for our communities. It’s the right thing to do for our patients. It’s the right thing to do for our employees. But alone, even as big as we are, we don’t have the ability to move the industry.” Computers used in Europe, she notes, must be built so they can be taken apart and recycled. That’s not so in the United States. “Without hospitals or others coming forward and saying, ‘We don’t want to put computers into landfills because we know what the toxic burden is on people’s bodies,’ we can’t change the industry here.”

At Kaiser and other companies, getting employees behind environmental programs has been key to overcoming many challenges. “We engage our front-line people — from nurses to janitorial staff — in all our design and all our ergonomic work,” Malcolm says. “It’s a lot easier to promulgate something if people are involved in creating it as well.”

Hospitals in the Hot Seat
Janet Brown, Practice Greenhealth’s partner program manager, has been working on greening hospitals for almost two decades. She says the green movement was long overdue, but it’s taken off in the past five years. What should consumers look for in a green hospital? Brown offers a list of questions:
• What is its environmental mission?
• Is it mercury-free?
• How does it treat medical waste?
• Does it recycle?
• Does it use greener cleaning supplies?
• Does it have energy and water conservation programs?
• How does it demonstrate environmental leadership in the community?
• Are its new buildings LEED certified?
• Does it serve healthy foods?