2014 North York General Green Report

Our hospital is a proud member of Greening Health Care, an organization that works with the Toronto Regional Conservation Authority to search for ways to reduce the impact hospitals have on the environment. Greening Health Care has over 60 members across Canada and North York General has slowly moved from being one of the worst energy consumers to being better than over 50% of the hospitals in the organization. Recently, we won the bronze medal in the Ontario Hospital Association Green Score Card.

Through several initiatives, we have managed to reduce our gas and electricity consumption as well as our waste production. These initiatives include:

  • Installing occupancy sensors and increasing building automation controls in the Jack Hurlbut Auditorium and operating rooms that ramp up the ventilation when the rooms are occupied and ramp down the air when they are unoccupied.

  • Installing motion sensor lighting in many of the hospital's rarely used spaces.

  • Reducing the temperature of the reheat system during the summer.

  • Using LED lighting in new construction projects. 

  • Tracking our shredding, as well as the organic and electronic waste that we recycle.

We continue to explore new opportunities that will improve our performance even more. These include:

  • Computer software that adjusts our building automation systems on a minute-by-minute basis by utilizing over 200 real time sensors and inputs located inside and outside our building.

  • Installing several variable speed drives and controls on the ventilation equipment at the Branson Ambulatory Care Centre that will turn down the air flow at night and on weekends in empty areas.

  • Continuing to maximize the opportunity to reduce ventilation needs in hospital areas that are unoccupied after regular business hours.

NYGH continues to decrease its negative impact on the environment.

The planned construction project on the 7th and 8th floors at the General site will be designed to incorporate many of these energy saving strategies and is expected to use 13% less gas and 48% less electricity than our current  Southeast Tower inpatient unit uses.

We are exploring BOMA Best certification, a Canadian certification program that evaluates us using 14 specific parameters ranging from green policies, waste disposal, energy management programs and water usage. If successful we will be one of the first health care institutions in Ontario to achieve this status.

Finally, we continue to offer our staff carpooling options through our partnership with Smart Commute and are currently exploring options for locked, sheltered, bicycle storage.

Contact:  Scott Lewis scott.lewis@nygh.on.ca

This article first appeared in the December 2014-January 2015 issue of The Pulse.

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