Industry Group Forms to Advance Healthcare Sustainability

Although, this is largely a fcilities initiative, it will no doubt impact the medical product supply chain.

Inova Health System announced that it has joined six other major hospital systems in the Healthier Hospital Initiative (HHI), a collaborative of leading health care institutions united to help speed the health care sector toward environmental sustainability. Inova Health System joins the six hospital systems—Advocate Health Care, Catholic Healthcare West, Hospital Corporation of America, Kaiser Permanente, MedStar Health, and Partners Healthcare—along with Practice Greenhealth, Health Care Without Harm and the Center for Health Design, that formed the Healthier Hospitals Initiative in May 2010. These leading hospital systems are partnering with the other organizations to provide expertise and technical assistance and programs to help hospitals carry out the HHI Agenda.

The HHI Sustainability Agenda utilizes evidence-based design and research data on environmental sustainability and community health to delineate a prioritized roadmap; it is a method for moving from good ideas implemented by individual facilities to a comprehensive system and sector-wide adoption of sustainable practices and cost reduction. The HHI Agenda is based on the premise that a coordinated sector-wide approach to learn from each other as we re-invent how we design, build and operate hospitals can improve patient outcomes and workplace safety, prevent illnesses, create extraordinary environmental benefits, and save billions of dollars.

Read more in the Health Care Without Harm Press Release

See what else Health Care Without Harm is doing at NoHarm.org

Who is producing your products? Check the Slavery Footprint Calculator

Although, this can only calculate a general footprint based on your personal lifestyle (kids, home, diet, gadgets, helathcare products) it shows how widespread bonded labor is through out the supply chain. Plus it is an insanely cool website.

Calculate your footprint at SlaveryFootprint.org

Read more about it at Treehugger.com

Walmart Brazil explains "end to end" product life cycle thinking

...At Walmart Brazil, one of the many sustainability initiatives that we've begun is our End-to-End Project, which analyzes the entire life cycle of select consumer products to reduce their environmental impact. We began End-to-End three years ago because we wanted to make the products our customers are buying more sustainable. At the time, many of our suppliers weren't aware of the benefits that come from greener products, and we wanted to help them integrate more sustainable practices in their businesses. We initiated a partnership with Cetea, the Packaging Technology Center, related to the Food Technology Institute, ITAL, to study products from the sourcing of raw materials to disposal of the waste after consumption. What we accomplished produced groundbreaking results....

...After the first round of End-to-End, suppliers were satisfied, improvements were being made to even more products across our supply chain, and sales of the improved products increased significantly, which tells us that customers want greener choices. In the second round of product analysis, improvements were made to 13 more products. In fact, so many suppliers wanted to participate in the second round that we had to turn several away because we wanted to focus on making the selected products the best they could be...

This guest post was written by Camila Valverde, Director of Sustainability, Walmart Brazil.

Read more at Treehugger

Saving money through the greening of healthcare facilities

...Through sustainable design, energy reductions of 12 to 20 percent are achievable. As the green product market matures, greater energy savings will be possible for a minimal capital investment. ...Greening healthcare allows us to reduce our exposure to elements that cause the sickness that we spend so much to cure... Green design is not a fix‐all for the industry but with potential savings measuring in the billions of dollars, it is good medicine.... A study from 2002 shows that water use per bed for small hospitals ranges from 70,000 to 300,000 gallons per bed per year. Through sustainable design, reductions of 20‐30% are feasible which also means hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings for facility.

Read more at TreeHugger

WM, Johnson & Johnson, Dupont Tackle Medical Waste Recycling

 

Rhode Island has taken a step toward requiring manufacturers to deal with the disposal of their products....The new Healthcare Plastics Recycling Council (HPRC) includes companies that represent the entire supply chain of the medical products industry, including Du Pont, Kimberly-Clark, Johnson & Johnson, and Waste Management.This collaborative effort will explore the development of more sustainable health care products, less wasteful packaging, and an increase in plastics for medical use. The companies, which also include BD Biosciences, Cardinal Health, Epi Recycling Solutions, and Hospira, will work to identify barriers to the recycling of plastics and find targeted solutions throughout the medical products supply chain...

Read more at the Triple Pundit

Shrinking the footprint of Healthcare

Only recently has the industry begun grappling with the amount of waste it generates, and one reason is that financially stressed hospitals are seeking ways to cut costs. “We’ve just seen a sea change,” said Cecilia DeLoach Lynn, director of sustainability education at Practice Greenhealth, a nonprofit group in Reston, Va., that is working to shrink the environmental footprint of health care institutions.  “Once upon a time, you had to do a lot of door-knocking to get anybody to pay attention,” Ms. DeLoach Lynn said. “These days, folks are asking us not whether or not they should be doing it, but how.” Practice Greenhealth’s members include around 1,100 hospitals and 80 companies.

Read more at the New York Times

EPA proposes a sensible approach to identifying chemicals of concern

 By Joe Sullivan (Flickr) [CC-BY-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

...the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) held stakeholder meetings to get public input into the criteria it will use to identify additional chemicals of concern beyond the 11 chemicals or chemical classes it has already identified.  EPA used these meetings (as well as an online forum open until September 14) as an opportunity for the public to respond to a “discussion guide” it issued in August that sets forth draft criteria and identifies data sources it intends to use to look for chemicals that meet the criteria...

...Of the more than 60,000 chemicals on the market at the time TSCA was adopted in 1976, fewer than two percent have received any substantive, data-informed review.  So it is a welcome development that EPA is actually looking at chemicals in commerce – despite the lack of a mandate to do so under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) – and, for those posing concerns, initiating at least those limited actions allowed by TSCA.

For the chemicals of concern EPA identifies, it expects to develop “chemical action plans” similar to those it has developed for the first 11 noted above.  These plans identify “a range of actions … from voluntary phase-outs and alternatives assessments in cooperation with industry and other stakeholders, to the development of test rules to require the development of additional data under section 4 of TSCA, to controls or use restrictions under sections 5 or 6 of TSCA.”

Read more at the Environmental Defense Fund

Rethinking Structural Packaging and the Product Within

The big idea? Move past the current cheap disposable bottle (and mindset) toward a new paradigm of utility. The goal is to design bottles that are truly reusable. An added benefit of his design is that the bottles are designed for consumer mixing, they’re shipped sans the 99% water that fills most cleaner bottles. Instead, they feature an innovative reservoir that--much like a bar shot dispenser--can shoot pre-measured concentrate into the bottle for consumers to mix with their own tap water.

Read more at Fast Company

Or visit the Replenish website

2011 Green Chemistry awards

Eliminating 199 million lb of hazardous chemicals and solvents, saving more than 21 billion gal of water, and avoiding 57 million lb of carbon dioxide emissions: Those are a few of the annual benefits derived from the technologies implemented by the past 82 winners of the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Awards. Now, five new winners of the presidential award and two of an affiliated student award were crowned during a ceremony held on June 20 in Washington, D.C.

Read more at the American Chemical Society

Gates Foundation to fund design of sustainable toilet

For decades, foundations and nonprofits have poured money into digging wells, building latrines, teaching personal hygiene and other strategies to improve public health in developing nations. But the Gates Foundation became the first to issue a toilet challenge. It gave away $4 million to eight universities that will now compete to create prototypes to the replace the 19th-century porcelain wonder.

Read more at the Star Tribune

State rule requires chemical-reporting for toys

SEATTLE (AP) - Washington state is requiring manufacturers of toys, cosmetics, jewelry and baby products to report when their products contain certain harmful chemicals, under a new law that took effect this week.

State officials have come up with a list of 66 chemicals that would trigger reporting to the state. The list includes formaldehyde, bisphenol A and phthalates, or plasticizers commonly found in consumer products.

Read more at Komo News

New Report on the Greening of Electronic Products

The report: “Greening Consumer Electronics: Moving Away from Bromine and Chlorine” features seven companies who have engineered environmental solutions that negate the need for most -- or in some cases all -- uses of brominated and chlorinated chemicals.

High volume uses of bromine and chlorine in flame retardant and plastic resin applications such as brominated flame retardants (BFRs) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) gained worldwide attention when scientific studies demonstrated their link to the formation of highly toxic dioxin compounds.

This report features seven electronics companies (two major consumer electronics companies, and five component suppliers) that have moved beyond compliance with regulatory mandates and engineered environmental solutions that negate the need for most – and in some cases all – uses of brominated and chlorinated chemicals. the case studies provide examples of how companies have addressed industry-wide technical performance challenges associated with this material change, while upholding quality, reliability, and product performance at an acceptable cost.

Read more at Clean Production Action

Or go directly to these links:

Press Release
Full Report
Executive Summary
Human Health Fact Sheet

EcoIndex pilot program for outdoor apparel products to begin Sept 2011

A new, improved version two scoring tool for apparel is currently under development and is set for release and pilot testing by Eco Working Group members in September 2011.

Learn more at EcoIndex

"What's that stuff?"

Ever wondered about what's really in hair coloring, Silly Putty, Cheese Wiz, artificial snow, or self-tanners? C&EN presents a collection of articles that gives you a look at the chemistry behind a wide variety of everyday products.

Check it out at Chemical & Engineering News

1st "Cradle to Cradle" packaging manufacturer opens in US

Be Green Packaging, located in Santa Barbara, CA, designs and manufactures Cradle to Cradle certified packaging from plant-based fibers and is currently supplying notable companies such as Whole Foods Market, 7-Eleven and P&G’s Gillette Razor Company, among others. Be Green's present domestic operations are limited to warehouses in Boston and Los Angeles. The company is seeking to augment its China manufacturing base with the new facility in Ridgeland, SC.

The new plant combines a sophisticated water reclamation system with extensive composting and recycling operations to achieve its goal of becoming a 100% waste-free facility. CEO Ron Blitzer plans to extend the company’s triple bottom line philosophy to the new plant. "We are committed to safety and quality in our plant and adding value to the communities in which we operate," said Blitzer. "With radical changes happening daily in our industry, now is the time to bring our manufacturing operations to

Read the full story at Just Means

Nike, Adidas, Puma, H&M and Others Found Discharging Toxic Chemicals Into Chinese Rivers

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After a year-long investigation of China's giant textile industry, Greenpeace has found that hormone-disrupting chemicals and other toxins are being discharged into the country's major water systems from major plants that supply big sports brands like Nike, Adidas and Puma, as well as international fashion brands like Lacoste, H&M, Calvin Klein and Converse.

Read the full article at treehugger.com

Read the original Greenpeace report

80,000 chemicals in use, 200 screened for toxicity

Image: Joe Sullivan (Flickr)

...Even though the law has been around since the mid-1970s, U.S. EPA has screened fewer than 200 chemicals of the roughly 80,000 currently in commerce. The agency has only banned the use of five chemicals as a result of those screenings. More, the program is perennially listed in the Government Accountability Office's annual "high risk list" of troubled federal programs (Greenwire, Feb. 16).

And last year, the President's Cancer Panel linked chemical exposures to cancer and said TSCA "may be the most egregious example of ineffective regulation of environmental contaminants."

Enter Lautenberg's "Safe Chemicals Act of 2011." Like the bill that stalled in the run-up to the midterm elections last year, Lautenberg is seeking to require chemical companies to prove substances are safe before they go on the market. It would also require EPA to prioritize chemicals based on the health risks they pose and grant the agency the authority to act swiftly on toxic chemicals. It would also create a public database of chemical information and incentivize the creation of alternative, nontoxic "green" chemicals (E&ENews PM, April 14)....

Read more in the NY Times

Green certifications demystified

Image: Inhabitat.com

With over 400 green labels out there it is hard to tell what is legit and what is greenwash.

Take look at Inhabitat's green labels 101

And check out the Eco Label Index

Injection molder goes "beyond compliance"

Launched in 1973 as a plastic injection molder with six employees, Cascade Engineering has blossomed into a diversified manufacturer with 15 business units and a product line that includes waste containers, auto parts, and furniture components—and, more recently, wind turbines, solar panels, and affordable water filters for the developing world. The company's technical innovations, sustainability efforts, and programs for employees have earned it multiple awards...

...Although the National Association of Manufacturers, or NAM, which represents 11,000 U.S. manufacturers, has forcefully condemned recent moves by the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, Keller voluntarily cut his company's emissions 20 percent from 2005 to 2010. Though NAM would trust national energy policies to "the marketplace and its proven ability to meet the nation's energy needs," according to its official policy statement, Keller advocated for a renewable portfolio standard in Michigan (requiring electricity providers to get 10 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2015) and supports a mandated phaseout of U.S. oil imports. Though various business groups complain about the cost of regulatory compliance, Keller believes that going "beyond compliance" has saved him money. "I'm all for setting goals and having voluntary compliance," says Keller. "But is it enough? That is the question."

Read the full article at inc.com

See what they are doing at Keller's opperations Cascade Engineering