Building a Greener Hospital: Two Columbus Health Care Systems Are Stressing Sustainability

When Lauren Koch lies in bed at night, her mind starts wandering down the corridors of the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. As the med center’s sustainability program manager, her mind’s eye is scanning every room, searching for ways to slash hospital waste. 

Could paper patient nightgowns be replaced with reusable cloth ones, she wonders? What about the NICU baby bottles that are used and then trashed? Or the unused milk in those bottles that can’t be saved? 

For the past four years, Koch has been charged with reducing the environmental impact of the hospital system, an effort being pursued at hospitals across the nation and encouraged by the federal government and numerous health care organizations. With an estimated average of 29 pounds of waste produced every day for each hospital patient in the country, the task is monumental and mind-bending. “How do we do this in a safe way without impacting patients?” Koch asks herself. 

Some changes have been obvious. One has been switching old-style lightbulbs to LED bulbs that save energy and reduce maintenance because they can last a decade or more. The OSU med center has replaced 40,000 bulbs on its main campus and hopes to do the same at other sites, Koch says.  

Another energy-saving move is turning down heat and turning up air conditioning on weekends at facilities that are only used on weekdays. Other efforts are less obvious but impactful: 

• The Ohio State med center, like many hospitals, has moved away from desflurane, a type of anesthesia used in surgical procedures, because it produces excessive amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. It uses alternative types of anesthesia that are less harmful to the environment.  
• It is replacing single-use items with reusable ones when appropriate. Containers that house used needles, for example, were being thrown away after one use, producing 70 tons of trash per year. Now, they are sterilized and reused up to 600 times, Koch says. 

OhioHealth is working on similar efforts, says Terri Scannell, principal adviser for sustainability and environmental, social and governance. On-demand lighting has been installed in some rooms, LED bulbs are replacing fluorescent bulbs, and patient gowns are being switched from paper to cloth. 

The system’s transportation fleet is being converted from gas to electric vehicles, and electric charging stations have been added at multiple sites. Soon, OhioHealth will experiment with a drone-delivery system for small medical supplies, lab work and prescriptions to replace vehicle drop-offs of those items, Scannell says. 

OhioHealth also is moving to a zero-waste food system by composting, using digesters and donating unneeded food to pantries or to farmers for animal feed. And it has signed on to the White House Climate Pledge, the only hospital system in Ohio to do so. That means it promises, among other things, to reduce organizational emissions by 50 percent by 2030 and achieve net zero by 2050. 

“We need to be good stewards of how we use our resources,” Scannell says. “The pledge is a bold goal.” 

Read more about going green:Columbus Monthly’s Sustainability Guide: Reduce Waste, Save Energy, Avoid Plastics and More

Both the OSU and OhioHealth hospitals have come up with unique ways to recycle blue surgical wrap, made of polypropylene (the plastic marked with a five) and used to keep instruments sterile as they’re moved from place to place. The wrap makes up an estimated 19 percent of operating room waste, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 

The OSU med center sends its wrap to a manufacturer that recycles it into bedpans. OhioHealth found a local company that could recycle its wrap into tote bags.  

Scannell says an employee noticed how much blue wrap was being thrown away and suggested it be recycled. As a demonstration, employees built a huge plexiglass cube at the front of Marion General Hospital to collect the discarded polypropylene. “We thought it would take forever to fill up, but it only took a week,” Scannell says. 

Reducing waste can come with a cost, Koch says, but so far, most efforts at the OSU med center have saved money in the long run—$12 million over six years. “We will reach a point where we’ll have to make investments, but we’re still finding cost savings,” she says. 

Scannell says that many waste-reduction efforts have saved money, including $2.4 million a year from reducing the system’s carbon footprint 21 percent since 2018. But she says OhioHealth looks at the efforts in a broader way. 

“People feel good about putting less waste in the landfill,” she says. “It really helps with our culture. A hospital is an anchor institution in a community, and we need to be good stewards of how we use our resources so we can be an example for our employees and our community.” 

This story is from the January 2024 issue of Columbus Monthly and the Winter 2024 issue of Columbus CEO.