Tomah VAMC Presented with "Emerald" Award
Emerald Award Logo
The Tomah VA Medical Center has been awarded the prominent Greenhealth Emerald Award by Practice Greenhealth, the nation’s leading health care community dedicated to transforming health care worldwide.
The Greenhealth Emerald Award is a competitive award that recognizes health care facilities that have achieved improvements in their mercury elimination, waste reduction, recycling, and source reduction programs. Winning hospitals are selected using Practice Greenhealth’s scoring and evaluation system and are further along the path to sustainability and show leadership in the local community and in the health care sector.
The 1,100 employees of the Tomah VA are proud of its many accomplishments in sustainability, including:
· Hosting an annual community electronics recycling Earth Day event. A total of 188,000 pounds were collected in 2015, compared to 17,000-20,000 pounds produced by the facility prior to starting this event in 2013.
· Great strides in environmentally preferable purchasing; and has eliminated many chemicals of concern from items ranging from furniture to intravenous tubing.
· New buildings are designed to LEED and Green Globe standards to help reduce their environmental footprint.
· All waste medications are collected and sent for high temperature incineration at properly permitted facilities, keeping them from contaminating the environment.
“Submitting an application to Practice Greenhealth for the first time was a great learning experience that showed me where we can further develop programs that protect our environment and the health of our staff, patients, and community,” said Kurt Brownell, Green Environmental Management Systems Manager. “We look forward to continuing this work to serve as a leader in the future of health care sustainability.”
The Practice Greenhealth Environmental Excellence Awards were presented in Dallas, Texas, May 19, 2016 at the CleanMed Conference & Exhibition.
