Tools and resources

National lead-free wheel weight initiative

• Transportation
• Fleet Vehicles

Wheel weights are clipped to the rims of every automobile wheel in the United States in order to balance the tires. These weights often come loose and fall off. They are either washed into storm sewers and end up in waterways or are gathered during street cleaning and placed in municipal landfills. The weights are susceptible to atmospheric corrosion. Currently, there are no regulatory controls…

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Integrating sustainability requirements into health care food service contracting

• Food
• Food Service

(Health Care Without Harm) There are many opportunities for hospitals to improve patient safety, worker safety, and the overall health of communities and the environment via their food service operations. By implementing environmentally preferable purchasing and other operational and maintenance strategies in food service, hospitals can help to reduce patient, worker and community exposure to…

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Health care procurement guide: Sustainably raised meat and poultry

• Food
• Food and Beverage Purchasing
• Local and sustainable purchasing

Significant health and environmental consequences are associated with industrialized meat and poultry production and distribution, including antibiotic resistance, and air and water contamination. This health care procurement guide, focused on meat and poultry, helps facilities start purchasing plans that take these critical issues into consideration and overcome barriers to identifying and…

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Composting: Frequently asked questions

• Waste
• Compost
• Composting
• food waste
• Frequently asked questions

What is composting? Compost is created from the decomposition of landscape and food wastes. In a finished product, it is a dark, crumbly and earthy-smelling material that appears similar to soil. Composting provides institutions with a method to dispose of a large portion of these waste streams in a way that benefits their bottom line and the environment. By composting, an institution avoids…

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Green Cleaning Products

• Chemicals
• Green Cleaning

Conventional cleaning products can contain chemicals associated with respiratory irritation, skin and eye injury, ozone depletion, cancer, and indoor air problems. Based on state occupational injury reporting, janitorial staff have some of the highest on-the-job injury rates. A 2007 study in The Lancet identifies nurses as having the highest rates of work-related asthma of any occupation in the…

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Less water presentation

• Water
• Presentation
• Toolkit

(Less water toolkit) The Health care water conservation and pollution prevention presentation and script was developed to help you educate your community. Download the presentation with notes to use as you see fit.  

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Pharmaceutical waste background

• Waste
• Pharmaceutical Waste
• Guide

Increased awareness around the presence of pharmaceuticals in drinking water has resulted in closer scrutiny and increased regulatory oversight of pharmaceutical waste.  Evidence of feminization of fish raised a red flag and resulted in more studies, closer scrutiny, and concern for human health and the environment.  The U.S. Geological Survey has done extensive work to characterize the kinds…

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Medical waste treatment and disposal

• Waste
• Medical Waste

The main task of a regulated treatment system is to render the waste noninfectious. The technical means to disinfect medical waste has existed for a long time. Incineration was once the method of choice for dealing with medical waste, and many hospitals burned their waste on site. But it gradually became clear that, while protecting the public from infection, hospitals using onsite incinerators…

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Appliances

• EPP
• EPP Resource

RFP Questions Refrigerators Ice Machines and Water Coolers 

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Best Practices in Energy Efficiency

• Best Practices
• Energy
• Energy Efficiency

Energy efficiency can enhance human health by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, improving outdoor air quality and decreasing acid rain. The energy needed to run commercial and industrial buildings in the United States produces 19 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, 12 percent of nitrogen oxides, and 25 percent of sulfur dioxide, at a cost of $110 billion a year. The health care sector is…

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