Legacy Mount Hood receives environmental leadership award

The Gresham Outlook, May 11, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009

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Legacy Mount Hood Medical Center has been awarded the 2007 H2E Environmental Leadership Award by the national organization Hospitals for a Healthy Environment (H2E).

The award recognizes leadership, pioneering efforts and innovation in setting the highest standards of environmentally responsible healthcare. The hospital will be inducted into the H2E Environmental Leadership Circle, an honor that recognizes its place in the vanguard of environmental progress in health care.

Winners of the Environmental Leadership Award must meet a long list of criteria for recycling, waste reduction and pollution control. In addition to a mercury-free environment and establishment of special recycling programs for sterile blue wrap, kitchen oil and solvents, Legacy Mount Hood Medical Center is the first facility within the five-hospital Legacy Health System to roll out recycling for tenants of its medical office buildings.

According to Tom Badrick, Legacy sustainability coordinator, “Tenant recycling in hospitals is not done anywhere else in the country, to my knowledge. This initiative pushes current boundaries in terms of setting high goals for protecting the environment. Most clinics and private practice physicians simply don’t have the resources to recycle on their own. By helping them recycle, we save money, make our tenants happy and ultimately protect the planet.”

Legacy Mount Hood recycled 195 tons of material in 2006, representing a 41-percent recycling rate. This translates to more than 2 pounds of recycled material per employee per day.

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