Practice Greenhealth Honors Environmental Excellence Awards Winners

RESTON, Va. — Practice Greenhealth has announced its 2014 Environmental Excellence Award Winners. These awards are given each year to honor healthcare institutions for outstanding programs that reduce the facility’s environmental footprint. Award winners were chosen using Practice Greenhealth’s thorough scoring and evaluation system, based on the data each facility submitted to the organization.

“Practice Greenhealth Award winners demonstrate that the health of their patients, staff and community is central to the core of their mission,” said Gary Cohen, founder and president of Practice Greenhealth. “These award winners have a vision that all healthcare organizations should strive for in the future.”

This year, four new awards were bestowed that recognize special achievements in environmental excellence in healthcare, including the Top 25 Environmental Excellence Award, the Circles of Excellence Awards, the Greening the OR Award and the Greenhealth Emerald Award. These awards accompany the Greenhealth Partner for Change Award, also enhanced for 2014.

The Top 25 Environmental Excellence Award is the highest honor for hospitals, recognizing those facilities leading the industry with innovation in sustainability, demonstrating superior programs and illustrating how sustainability is entrenched in their culture.

The Circles of Excellence Awards have been developed to celebrate facilities with sustainability programs that excel in a given category, including climate, chemicals, energy, environmentally preferable purchasing, food, green building, greening the OR, leadership, waste and water.

The Greening the OR Award recognizes the one top facility demonstrating sustainability and innovation in the operating room by working to reduce the environmental impact of its surgical suites. This new award is made possible by Sterilmed.

The Greenhealth Emerald Awards recognize the cream of the crop of the Greenhealth Partner for Change Awards recipients with more advanced programs that cross many different categories.

Practice Greenhealth honored its top performers at the Environmental Excellence Awards on June 5 in Cleveland, Ohio, at an awards presentation and gala dinner ceremony during the CleanMed Conference & Exhibition. Other awardees include the System for Change, DEHP-Free, Champion for Change and Making Medicine Mercury Free awards.

A full list of Environmental Excellence Award winners is available at www.PracticeGreenhealth.org/Awards.