University of Maryland Medical Center drew a large crowd – even with the threat of rain – to the opening of its farmers’ market Tuesday. Although it’s just the beginning of the season, big juicy strawberries, enticing asparagus and bunches of leafy greens were on sale.

This year brings antibiotic and hormone-free meat; pesticide-free produce; plants, pickles, and of course the signature crepes, burgers, spreads, soups, and more.

And for a third year the University Farmers Market is accepting Women Infants and Children (WIC) vouchers and senior coupons.

With our office nearby, the MD H2E staff always looks forward to Tuesdays and what the market will bring! Here’s to a successful season.

The market is open Tuesdays from 10:00 am – 2:30 pm, through November 22.

Read more: http://www.umm.edu/green/farmers_market.htm#ixzz1uPLXp0hT

Rex Farms Orchard

A long line of lunchers

Nurses Denise Choiniere, Sustainability Manager, and Justin Graves, Green Team Chair, UMMC

Rain couldn’t keep the shoppers away

Click here to read the article featuring MD H2E award winners Anne Arundel Medical Center, Carroll Hospital Center, Good Samaritan Hospital, Union Hospital of Cecil County, and University of Maryland Medical Center. Nurses Denise Choiniere, of UMMC, and Barbara Sattler, of University of Maryland School of Nursing, also won awards for their sustainability work in health care.

Excerpted from”Green Health Care,” published in the December 2011/January 2012 issue of Organic Gardening:

In 2005, Sattler founded Maryland Hospitals for a Healthy Environment (MD H2E). Today, the organization boasts a membership comprising three-quarters of the hospitals in the state. Their efforts include recycling and composting, reduced reliance on toxic chemicals, and environmentally preferable purchasing policies. “We’re seeing the hospitals begin to adopt an environmental ethic,” Sattler says, “so it’s part of the fabric of the decisions they’re making.”

That doesn’t make it easy. “An institution with 7,000 employees and 800 patients on any given day, it’s a huge operation,” says Denise Choiniere, the sustainability manager at the University of Maryland Medical Center. In 2006, as a cardiac-care nurse in intensive care, Choiniere launched a recycling program that now diverts nearly 100,000 batteries annually from incineration. Other initiatives include a 50 percent reduction in regulated medical waste, high-efficiency vacuum pumps to reduce water consumption by 5 million gallons annually, and a program to divert discarded drugs from municipal wastewater treatment facilities that often can’t remove them.

Louise Mitchell, MD H2E’s sustainable foods program manager, promotes the Healthy Foods in Health Care Pledge by connecting hospital food-service directors and chefs with local farmers to increase their purchase of local, sustainable foods. She also provides technical support for other healthy food initiatives. One outcome of this support is that 17 health-care facilities statewide now host farmers’ markets or farm stands on their campuses. This fall, she hosted a training program for kitchen staff interested in purchasing and preparing sustainably produced meat and poultry from small, local farms. “Hospitals have shifted toward having more food delivered that’s already prechopped or precooked,” says Mitchell. “They have the kitchens and the knives to prepare fresh foods, but they don’t necessarily have the labor or the ovens.”

Click here for the entire article! Also featuring Highlandtown Healthy Living Center, Maryland Pesticide Network and Beyond Pesticides.

Health Care Change Agents Recognized in Environmental Conference

For Immediate Release: November 10, 2011

Contact:  Molly Englund

410-706-6832 (office)

Englund@son.umaryland.edu

Several Maryland hospitals and individual nurses were honored for their environmental health achievements at the Maryland Hospitals for a Healthy Environment’s (MD H2E) annual Environmental Excellence in Health Care Conference today.

The first annual Nursing Leadership in Environmental Health Award was presented to Denise Choiniere, MS, RN, sustainability manager for University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC). Choiniere, the first full-time sustainability manager in a Maryland hospital, spearheaded a number of environmental initiatives at UMMC, including a hazardous pharmaceutical waste management program, Earth Day events, and a weekly farmers’ market.

MD H2E Director Barbara Sattler, DrPH, RN, FAAN, was honored with an Environmental Health Visionary Award. Sattler is founder and director of the University of Maryland School of Nursing’s Environmental Health Education Center and an associate professor in the School’s Community/Public Health master’s specialty.

Carmela Coyle, president and CEO of the Maryland Hospital Association, presented five Maryland hospitals with MD H2E Trailblazer Awards. The Trailblazer Award is given annually to hospitals that have shown leadership in advancing sustainability in their operations. The 2011 winners are:

Anne Arundel Medical Center (AAMC) – AAMC replaced operating room surgical lights with LED lights and started a program to move from disposable single use medical devices to reprocessed and remanufactured devices. They also implemented a surgical services recycling program and took additional steps to reduce the amount of operating room waste.

Carroll Hospital Center (CHC) –Using a sustainability tracking tool to quantify the results of an environmental initiative, CHC was able to track its water, energy, and natural gas usage. As a result, CHC took steps that reduced natural gas usage by 30 percent. These steps included boiler refurbishing, boiler parameter control charts, adjustment of pressure and water temperatures, and softening all domestic water within the hospital, which improved heat transfer through coils.

Good Samaritan Hospital – Good Samaritan Hospital built an employee/community vegetable and herb garden on its campus. Volunteers planted a variety of crops and donated a portion of the food to a local food bank. The goal of the garden project is to teach employees about healthy food options, creating their own gardens, and sharing the harvest with the community. Good Samaritan is one of two Baltimore hospitals with vegetable gardens.

Union Hospital of Cecil County (UHCC) – Union Hospital is committed to purchasing local sustainable meat, poultry, and produce for its cafeteria and patient meals. Local farms have increased their acreage for produce, employed winter greenhouses for growing, and increased poultry flock size to meet the hospital’s needs. Forty-nine percent of UHCC’s meat and 100 percent of its beef is now purchased locally. Food waste is either composted or sent to an area hog farmer to be used for feed.

University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) – UMMC focused on lighting conservation and upgrades in the past year. The goals of their project included turning off lights when not in use and when daylight is sufficient in atriums and hallways, replace inefficient light bulbs with more efficient bulbs, and establish a baseline to monitor changes. Occupancy sensors and photo cell sensors were installed and lights in mechanical rooms were placed on automated controls.

#  #  #

Maryland Hospitals for a Healthy Environment is a technical assistance and networking initiative that promotes environmental sustainability in health care. Participants include hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, research laboratories, and other ancillary health care providers in Maryland (http://mdh2e.org).

An article about “greening” the operating room looked to UMMC for advice in the June issue of OR Manager. The article, written by Cynthia Saver of Columbia, Maryland, examined environmentally sustainable practices that can be fairly simple to implement at a health care facility – and can save money, too. It’s all about the 3 Rs: reduce, reuse, recycle.

Reduce

There are three areas where waste can be reduced in the OR: regulated medical waste (RMW), unused supplies and energy. Up to 90% of what gets thrown out as RMW doesn’t need to be thrown into the red bag: unless contaminated by body fluids, masks, suction tubes and IV bags aren’t biohazardous.  Using energy efficient lighting, heating, and sterilizing can have a big impact, as well.

Reuse

According to Saver, “Reusing surgical gowns, drapes, table covers, and other items significantly reduces waste. UMMC contracts with a reprocessing firm that picks up, cleans, and returns the materials.” Sharps containers can also be reused – UMMC saved $70,000 a year this way.

Recycle

Blue wrap and medical plastics are both recyclable, and UMMC donated unused medical supplies to the medical school.

There’s so much more in this article to spark ideas about how to save money in and reduce the environmental impact of the operating room – click the link to keep reading!

http://practicegreenhealth.org/sites/default/files/upload-files/ormvol27no6orsgoinggreen.pdf