As part of our commitment to environmental stewardship and achieving carbon neutrality before 2030, Swedish partnered with Practice Greenhealth, the nation’s leading organization that helps health care institutions create healthy workplaces and decrease their impact on the environment.
In our first year of participating in the Practice Greenhealth program, all five Swedish hospitals were recognized with the 2021 award for “Environmental Excellence.” This indicates a significant and sustained commitment to environmental stewardship across 12 categories including energy efficiency, waste reduction, eliminating mercury and other chemicals of concern, reducing transportation impacts and delivering sustainable food programs.
For example, we’re using analytics at all five hospital campuses and all Swedish-owned facilities to reduce our energy usage. These analytics help us control our environments, including tracking and managing our lighting and heating usage.
At Swedish First Hill and Swedish Cherry Hill our Surgical Services teams are “Greening the OR” by separating all recyclable materials and working with our Environmental Services team on properly disposing of these items. At Swedish First Hill we’ve streamlined the recycling of all single use paper and plastics and between Jan. and June 2021, diverting 56.2 tons of recyclables from the trash. Swedish Cherry Hill diverted 94.6 tons during the same time frame.
This spring, Swedish Issaquah became our first carbon neutral campus for electricity and utility. In a partnership with Puget Sound Energy, we now use renewable wind energy to power our campus instead of relying on steam which is powered by natural gas and is not considered a clean commodity.
The Practice Greenhealth recognition is a testament to the hard work of the teams focused on achieving our carbon neutral goal and an indicator of the progress Swedish is making in our pursuit environmental stewardship goals.
