Powering sustainability in hospitals

Many people are unaware that health care creates a significant portion of the world’s climate footprint and in turn produces an extraordinary amount of waste.

This contributes to rising temperatures, droughts, floods, pollution and food insecurity that ultimately leads to worsening health outcomes and conditions.

However, Michigan Medicine is aiming to be a part of the solution, not the problem.

That’s where Chip Amoe, J.D., M.P.A., comes in.

Amoe, who serves as U-M Health’s sustainability officer, knows all about the topic, as he’s charged with leading the hospital’s sustainability strategy and has a rich background in the area.

Here, Amoe answers questions about his role and how the hospital is doing its part to reduce its impact on the climate.

What does your team do to oversee sustainability at Michigan Medicine?

Amoe: My primary team at Michigan Medicine is comprised of Chris Victory, who serves as our lead sustainability consultant and is an engineer by trade, as well as Stephanie Peters, who is our sustainability project manager.

We all report up to Tony Denton, J.D., M.H.A., senior vice president and chief environmental, social and governance officer for Michigan Medicine and U-M Health.

In my role, I oversee our sustainability efforts across the entire enterprise, which includes all the academic medical center facilities in and around Ann Arbor, as well as our regional network sites within UM Health-West and UM Health-Sparrow.

In total, there are 221 facilities across the enterprise, which is a large scope of work.

Chris has been instrumental in implementing a number of projects, including our medical plastics recycling initiative, where our committed operating room staff helps collect tons of clean medical plastics for recycling each year throughout our operating rooms, and manages energy efficiency projects in conjunction with our facilities teams.

In addition, Stephanie has been a huge help in tackling the complex challenge of collecting and reporting data to track progress toward our five sustainability goals.

What are Michigan Medicine’s sustainability strategies and goals?

Amoe: Michigan Medicine’s sustainability strategy has five main goals: reduce greenhouse gas emissions, eliminate the use of chemicals of concern, reduce waste, source local and sustainable food, and build healthy and resilient communities.

These goals align with U-M’s Carbon Neutrality Goals and Campus Sustainability Goals as well as commitments U-M Health has made to reduce its impact of climate change and improve the health of the communities we serve.

Each of the goals were intentionally chosen for the benefits they can provide to planetary and human health.

Of course, we are always looking to expand our existing sustainability programs and pilot new initiatives that help us advance our goals.

How does your team collaborate with others across campus, both at Michigan Medicine and at the University of Michigan?

Amoe: We really rely on the support of numerous teams throughout Michigan Medicine and the U-M Campus.

The goal is to embed sustainability into the work that we all do in order to make it a part of our culture and how we normally operate.

Doing so will not only improve the health of our patients and communities, but it will also make us more efficient and financially sustainable as an organization by reducing energy and wasted resources.

When it comes to executing effective sustainability initiatives, we greatly appreciate the support of team members in both our clinical and non-clinical spaces.

For example, our anesthesia and operating room teams have been integral in helping us reduce emissions from anesthetic gases and waste through recycling and expanded use of reusable medical products. Many of our labs have also worked closely with our campus sustainability partners to achieve ‘green certification’ for their spaces.

Our facilities team is also constantly reviewing new opportunities to reduce energy and make improvements to how we manage our energy use.

Construction of the new pavilion is nearing completion, and a lot has gone into ensuring that it is LEED Platinum, which is the highest level of sustainability certification within the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, known as LEED, green building rating system.

To achieve LEED Platinum, a building or project must earn 80 or more points on the LEED scorecard, demonstrating exceptional performance in areas like energy and water efficiency, material selection and indoor environmental quality.

The D. Dan and Betty Kahn Health Care Pavilion will be the first LEED Platinum hospital in the state of Michigan, and many clinical and non-clinical teams came together to ensure that this happens.

Michigan Medicine/U-M Health recently received significant national recognition for its sustainability efforts. Can you explain more about this?

Earlier this year, we were excited to learn we were named one of the top 25 hospitals in the country for excellence in environmental sustainability by Practice Greenhealth.

For those that are unaware, Practice Greenhealth is the nation’s leading organization dedicated to reducing global warming and the carbon footprint associated with health care practices.

As the organization’s highest honor, the ‘Top 25 Award’ recognizes the best of the best in health care sustainability, and I am tremendously proud of all our team members who helped make this happen.

Both Chris and Stephanie, as well as many of our collaborative team members, were heavily involved in the application process, which includes compiling extensive data and information about our sustainability practices to submit for a rigorous scoring review.

The award application assesses performance across eleven environmental sustainability categories, including leadership, waste, chemicals, greening the operating room, food, sustainable procurement, energy, water, climate, transportation and green building.

I’m also thrilled that we received four additional ‘Circle of Excellence’ Top 10 awards for our leadership, greening of the OR, energy and food efforts.

However, it’s important to remember that we don’t do this work to win awards, we do it because climate change and pollution are serious threats to human health and improving the environments where people live, work and play is essential to improving the health of our patients, employees and communities.

As one of the elite academic health systems in the country, we have a unique opportunity to lead by example and teach many how to be good stewards of our planet for the benefit of all.

I look forward to continuing to work with our entire U-M team to make us the leaders and best in health care sustainability.