Bon Secours' green effort team includes, (from left) Stephen Huebner, vice president of materials operations; Steve Austin, administrative director, Sterile Processing; and Dawn Fitzgerald, analyst and project coordinator, Bon Secours Virginia Health System. (Photo by Sarah Walor)
Stephen Huebner sees green when he sees blue.
The blue in question is blue wrap, a ubiquitous substance in a hospital that’s used to cover sterilized instruments. It may be blue, but in Huebner’s eyes, it’s green, as in a material that can be kept out of a landfill and recycled.
The blue wrap is No. 7 plastic, and its recycling was started about five years ago. The material is taken off-site, baled and held for a recycling vendor. The recycled wrap is repurposed into items such as foam pellets and cloth-type bags.
About 20 tons of the material was recycled in 2016 from St. Mary’s Hospital alone.
“We keep that out of landfills at no cost to us,” Huebner says.
Huebner sees a lot of green in his job as the vice president for materials management for Bon Secours Richmond Health System. His work and efforts throughout Bon Secours have earned national honors for the health system: a System for Change Award for six consecutive years from Practice Greenhealth, a nonprofit that supports sustainable health care. The accolade is in recognition of dedication to high standards of sustainability and a track record of “improving environmental performance.”
St. Mary’s Hospital was named in 2016 as one of Practice Greenhealth’s Top 25 Environmental Excellence Award winners, the highest honor to an individual hospital through the nonprofit. Three more Bon Secours facilities in metro Richmond received the second-highest recognition, the Emerald Award: Memorial Regional Medical Center in Mechanicsville, St. Francis Medical Center in Midlothian and Richmond Community Hospital.
Green health and sustainability practices are natural extensions of the sisters of Bon Secours and their mission and healing ministry, says Huebner, who notes that the sisters always had a strong interest in stewardship.
“Stewardship is a value, not only of finances, but all resources,” Huebner says. “That’s the key focal point we have.”
Green health care has been Huebner’s mission since 2009, when Peter Bernard, then-CEO of Bon Secours Virginia, told him he was going to become the “Jolly Green Giant” for the system, the chair of a green council. The learning curve was steep for Huebner, resulting in hours of study on the issue.
Green representatives from the four Richmond system hospitals meet monthly, and local unit green teams meet regularly. There’s also a system-wide monthly conference call of green councils that represent Bon Secours operations in Virginia and five other states.
The hospital system focuses its efforts on recycling and in reducing its regulated medical wastes, such as blood and other bio fluids that have to be separated from regular trash.
Medical waste disposal costs about twice as much as traditional waste removal, so any reductions in the waste stream is cost effective. Bon Secours educated its workers not to throw other items such as coffee cups and, pizza boxes in with the medical waste. It saved money when those bits of detritus of everyday office life were disposed of in the proper containers.
The employee education efforts paid off in other ways, as Bon Secours facilities recycle about 31 percent of all wastes. The national average is 25 percent. St. Mary’s Hospital is a leader in the effort, recycling 38.6 percent of waste, says Dawn Fitzgerald, a project analyst for Bon Secours Health System.
There are other efforts as well.
Bon Secours has been recycling cardboard for 20 years. They also recycle light bulbs; battery recycling from one facility has kept 20 tons of cells out of landfills. Items such as computers or hospital beds are sometimes sent to overseas missions or a school for reuse.
The efforts even extend to holding office supply exchanges, where excess items from pencils to paperclips are brought to a central area and workers are invited to take what they need instead of ordering more supplies.
“We actively try to divert as much as we can from the landfill,” Fitzgerald says.
Green Thumbs and Green Health
There’s an array of recycling efforts at Virginia Commonwealth University and its Medical College of Virginia campuses, among many initiatives. Eco-friendly design has been incorporated into several structures on the medicine school campus. The dentistry school, Medical Sciences Building 2, the McGlothlin Medical Education Center, the Institute for Engineering and Medicine, the pharmacy school, and the Massey Cancer Center Vivarium have all earned LEED (Leadership in Energy in Environmental Design) certifications. The Allied Health Science Building, set to begin construction in 2018, also will be LEED certified, says Erin Stanforth, director of sustainability for VCU.
One of the more innovate green initiatives at VCU has been development of two gardens, including one on the medical campus on 10th Street near the childcare center and the adult day center.
The 1,300-square-foot garden has 14 raised beds and two tabletop beds that are wheelchair accessible. That space is for anyone in the adult day center, says Stanforth, director of sustainability for VCU. In warmer months, five to 10 senior gardeners will come out and grow produce. Many grew up on farms and the gardening brings back memories and also provides exercise and a chance to get out and enjoy themselves.
Some produce is donated to programs in the community, including the Center for Healthy Hearts program, in which produce goes to people at risk for heart disease, says Stanforth.
There are other initiatives across Richmond.
Sheltering Arms Rehab Institute, a new, regional rehabilitation facility set for groundbreaking later in the year in Goochland County will have LEED certification, according to Stephanie Sulmer, director of marketing and public relations with Sheltering Arms Hospital, a partner in the facility with VCU Health.
Sheltering Arms already promotes paper recycling, and has reduced its paper stream by shifting to electronic communication and records wherever possible. Considered a specialty hospital, Sheltering Arms is exempt from federal mandates regarding e-records, but is making the switch voluntarily, beginning in August, Sulmer says.
Energy efficiency is optimized at Chippenham Hospital through steps including preventative maintenance and use of equipment that runs heating and cooling units as needed, says Bob Appleby, the facility’s director of engineering. The facility recycles about 1,200 to 1,500 pounds of batteries each month and about 2,000 pounds of cardboard weekly. Upgrades in its exterior lighting to LED reduced energy usage per light from about 400 watts to 4 watts, and resulted in a brighter output, too.
“That’s been massive in our reduction in energy,” he says.
