University Health Network employees plant trees to support environmental sustainability and community well-being.Supplied
Six years ago, James Hornibrook, a clinical support nurse at Toronto General Hospital, part of the University Health Network (UHN), joined the green team for the hospital’s operating room, where he works. The 30-member volunteer body had been revamped under the leadership of a surgeon, Dr. Laura Donahoe, to find ways to make the OR’s operations more environmentally sustainable.
“There’s a lot of waste that’s produced in the OR,” Hornibrook says, due to the need for materials to be sterile to minimize the risk of infection. Still, the green team came up with strategies to cut the waste stream.
One was to collect and recycle glass vials that contain medication used by anesthesiologists and had previously been thrown away. Another was to divert the copper contained in cautery cables used in electrosurgery.
“You use at least one cautery pencil for every surgery, and it contains copper,” Hornibrook says. “The copper can be reclaimed if we save the cables and then bring them to a scrap metal facility. They’ll purchase the copper within those cables.”
Other OR green team initiatives include reducing the amount of wrapping material used by the hospital’s sterile processing department by using trays that can be sterilized again, as well as replacing disposable caps worn in the operating theatre with reusable cloth caps. By embroidering each employee’s name in the caps, some 250 OR workers are reminded of each other’s names, which has enhanced the sense of teamwork and belonging.
About 700 employees are part of the green team with sub-groups like Hornibrook’s making green changes in departments and units across UHN’s multiple sites. With the support and expertise of a dedicated energy and sustainability department, they are empowered to make green improvements to aspects of UHN operations that only they would understand.
“We’ve really been working at this for a long time,” says Michael Kurz, UHN’s director of environmental compliance, energy and sustainability. His department was created 27 years ago to champion and advise on sustainability efforts throughout the sprawling organization. Since 2010, those efforts have saved $51 million in utility costs, curbed greenhouse gas emissions by 67,000 tonnes and reduced water consumption by 47 per cent.
“We don’t view sustainability as a project here, a project there. It’s embedded into the organization through strategy, leadership, accountability and day-to-day decision making,” Kurz says. “We see environmental stewardship as an integral part of public health.”
Sustainability is woven into UHN’s strategic plan such that, for example, it’s one of the factors in every purchasing decision made by the procurement team. Energy conservation projects are analyzed using a triple bottom line approach considering cost effectiveness, benefit to users and environmental sustainability.
As a result, UHN is installing energy-efficient LED lighting across many of its facilities. It’s upgrading heating and ventilation systems to recover heat that used to be exhausted. Some sites have connected to district energy systems that utilize cold water from the bottom of Lake Ontario for air conditioning.
More localized ideas have come from the green teams, such as substituting the anesthetic gas desflurane with equally effective gases that have a much lower impact on global warming.
And all employees are encouraged to take part in periodic sustainability events, such as planting trees, cleaning up lakeshores or working in UHN gardens that support staff and patient well-being.
“There’s a whole part of the corporate intranet devoted to sustainability,” Hornibrook notes, where employees can learn more about green initiatives going on and get involved.
“If someone’s considering joining UHN, they can look toward our sustainability mindset,” Kurz adds. “It’s part of realizing our vision and strategy for building a healthier world.”
More from Canada’s Greenest Employers
Advertising feature produced by Canada’s Top 100 Employers, a division of Mediacorp Canada Inc. The Globe and Mail’s editorial department was not involved.