Sustainable Living: From Personal Choices to Greener Healthcare
April 16, 2024 | Episode 14
Producer’s Note: The following is an AI-generated transcript of The Wellness Conversation, an OhioHealth Podcast
SPEAKERS: Allegra Wiesler, Marcus Thorpe
00:14
Welcome back to the wellness conversation and OhioHealth Podcast. I'm Marcus Thorpe.
00:18
I'm Missy Gleason. Today we're discussing a topic that's close to our hearts and crucial for our planet, sustainability in our own homes and in health care.
00:27
And we are thrilled to have Allegra Wiesler sustainability advisor for OhioHealth. Here, she's going to share her expertise on living with more sustainability, and OhioHealth's commitment to a healthier planet. Allegra, it's good to see it. Thanks for joining us.
00:28
Thanks for having me.
00:29
Well, let's talk about your role at OhioHealth. It's not a role that's been around forever. So relatively new to the organization, talk about how you found your way here and the great work that you're doing.
00:54
Yeah, so I've been doing this work for about six years. Now with OhioHealth, going on my seventh. And that's when the work started. So I actually have an environmental background, did some energy efficiency consulting, and brought that all together to create a sustainability program here for the system. So basically, my day to day looks like going around and identifying energy efficiency opportunities, waste reduction, landfill diversion work and food waste. And we also look at things like you know, sustainable procurement, healthy buildings work, and then working with our supply chain. So it's all over the place.
01:34
I will say I've been here since 2016, with OhioHealth. And it's amazing now how much sustainability is talked about in meetings and stories we're working on. So you know, indirectly, kudos to you and your team, because it is part of the regular conversation that we are having and what we're thinking about. And I think that's really neat to see this turn that we're making as an organization.
01:59
Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely glad to hear that you're happy about this work. And you hear about it often. Because it's something we get a lot from our nurses or physicians and all of our staff across the hospital, it's really important to them. And every time we we look at, you know, surveys for our associates, and our leaders, it's always a top concern for them. So it's really becoming part of our culture. I love that it is part of our culture. And that is a really big job. But to start the podcast, we'd love to narrow down into the individual contribution to sustainability. So can you give us some simple yet impactful ways that we as individuals can contribute to more sustainable lifestyle? Yeah so, when I think of sustainability, from a personal perspective, we're really looking at, you know, ways that you can do good work throughout your days without having to be perfect at it. So really a little bit out of time, we really need a lot of imperfect people doing the work, rather than just a few perfect people that are, you know, passionate about the environment. So I think on a day to day basis, we're really thinking about the choice, the little choices we make and how they scale across the entire, you know, community. So if you're gonna go get coffee, for example, at your local coffee shop, then you're going to want to maybe just bring your own cup with you. Something like that seems small. But if you think about all the people that are getting coffee every single day, it actually scales to be quite an impactful level of landfill diversion. You can recycle at your home. Columbus is actually and all of Central Ohio actually has really high levels of recycling. So you might hear stories of other locations across the country that may not be doing so well. From a recycling perspective. Columbus actually has really high recycling rates, because majority of our recycling is actually recycled here within the state. So everything you're throwing in that recycling bin, if you do it correctly, it is going to be recycled. So definitely no greenwashing from that standpoint. But even things like lowering your lowering your energy bills, or, you know switching out to LED lights turning down the heat on your hot water heater, air drying some clothes, maybe instead of putting on the dryer, buying, you know, your toilets, your dishwashers, your washing machines to all to be ENERGY STAR or you know, low water usage are all really helpful ways to make a difference. And then just simply unplugging the things that you're not using in your house that draw a lot of energy when you don't, you're not even thinking about it. Those can all be really easy ways to can make a really small impact. But again, when we're scaling it, it becomes a big community effort.
04:59
I'm not coffee drinker. So when you say bring your own coffee mug or cup in is that something that restaurants see or shops that are used to seeing that they're like, this is great, no problem, we can get that for you.
05:11
Yeah, I think even Starbucks recently just announced that you can bring in your own cup, and Starbucks will fill it for you. So everyone's working on it. Sometimes if I go in person versus going in the line, that also tends to help. But just clean it, I guess you can want to get tea, you know, tea. But I guess your point, then, not having the waste in the first place, is the most sustainable option. And if you do generate that waste, then looking at ways to divert it from the landfill, and that would be through recycling. Or if you have food waste composting, about a million pounds of food waste enters Franklin County landfills every day, yet millions of people don't have access to healthy food. So just looking at how we're procuring food for our own homes, you know, not letting it go to waste. And if you do prepare it, and there are food scraps that come from that, looking at ways to send it into a compost bin, which is either you know, at your own home, if you want to do that, or look at City composting programs, if you're in, you know, Central Ohio, they're actually becoming really popular, and there's more coming out soon. So I would definitely keep a lookout, I think actually, the City of Columbus just opened up, like recycle, reuse collection drop off, or it's kind of like a drive thru. And you can bring your car and you can bring your hazardous waste and your clothes that are or not in good shape to recycle for fabrics, you can bring your food waste all of your recycling, and you just drive through and drop it off. So it's definitely becoming a big goal for the city as well. Because they do have their own climate action plan. But you know, at your own home, you have a big footprint. So again, you don't be perfect with it, but try
07:05
I do think it's encouraging to see. And we're going to get into the OhioHealth side of sustainability here in just a little bit. But to see so many different pockets of communities that have really stepped up to say, you know, we want to make a difference. And we know that maybe we haven't done it perfect in the past. But how can we find a way to do better? And that's seriously encouraging. What about nutrition? You mentioned a little bit about that, too? A big role that we play personal planetary health? What are some maybe sustainable eating habits that someone can adopt? I know, before we started this podcast, I told you that I do like hamburgers. And so I'm gonna see how this conversation is gonna go, I'm gonna be open minded to what you're gonna say.
07:47
Yeah, because I'm gonna say number one way to meet your wellness goals and sustainability goals is going to be to eat less red meat. And, you know, I won't tell you to go vegan Marcus.
08:05
I wasn't going to
08:09
But it's really just to reduce the amount of red meat you're eating on a daily basis. Red meat, you know, it's not good for your health. But it's also one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions from an agricultural standpoint, because if you think about all of the land that is used, not just for the agriculture itself, but for the fields of crops that are used to feed the farm animals, it really does degrade the land. But it also creates those those emissions. So it's kind of a win-win when you don't eat a burger.
08:49
A couple of less burgers, that's fine. Yeah, you don't have to be perfect.
08:52
Yeah, you don't to be perfect. So just fewer of them. But another thing is, you know, if you want to do small things like don't put milk in your coffee, you could do something like oat milk, oat milk has pretty low emissions, it doesn't need a lot of water to produce it like almond milk does. So even and it's you know, not high in sugar. So it is something that you can just replace and you go with your reusable mug to the coffee shop or you go or in your tea. Do you have a resource or is there anything that we can direct our listeners to to like, look up food that is like low emissions? I don't know. I don't have a good resource off the top my head. There's a lot out there, though. I think even the CDC says, you know, to reduce your red meat intake. Just from a health perspective, not even greenhouse gas emissions. But I don't know what maybe I can I can think of one? Yeah, I mean, we do have our podcast page on ohiohealth.com. Okay, I'll put something on there then. Absolutely, so we did touch on a lot about things that you can do at home, is there anything else that you think like, as we go about our daily lives that we might want to touch on? Yeah, I think one more thing to mention is, especially, you know, as OhioHealth poachers, this from a health perspective, if we think about climate change and how that's going to adjust our temperatures here. So we are going to start seeing hotter days and fewer cold days, we already are starting to see that this winter was pretty mild, we're also starting to starting to see things like you know, bad air quality, and think about some of the worst air quality days this past year than the last two decades combined. As we think about how we're going to fix those, those things like fixing the air quality, and mitigating heat effects really going to affect us from a city perspective, because we have fewer trees here, it's hotter, with more concrete, it's reflecting off of the ground, becoming more hot, and then that therefore affects the health of the people that are entering the hospitals, maybe they have asthma attacks more often. Maybe, you know, they can't afford to keep the air conditioning turned on really high. Because there are definitely social disparities in play here. And we think about climate change, and health, I think one of the best things to do is think about how you can plant trees, get planted in your own yard, help care for a neighbor's tree, the lot of free tree giveaways in central Ohio. So if you can plant a native tree and maintain that tree, it's going to help lower the effects of a heating climate, and it's going to help clean our air. And if we look at there it's called the urban heat island effect, it's basically what I just mentioned, with lack of trees and everything covered in concrete. You see higher temperatures in low income areas, they tend to have fewer trees, fewer parks, and just more concrete. So if you think about, you know, volunteering for Earth Day events that are coming up in the community, any ongoing events that people can do in their community, it would be something like like planting trees, it's really a win win for people for the planet, and it really does help from a health impact standpoint. So I would say that stuff really a win-win. And anytime you can plant some pollinator flowers, because we need to help the bees too.
12:36
Yeah, again, it's, it's, it's doing something small, it's starting small and building to more and more. Nobody's asking you to make these. We'd love for you to make these wild changes to your life. But if you're if everybody's doing a little, it adds up to a lot. Yeah. Let's talk about OhioHealth sustainability initiatives, the work that you've been doing, since you've been here with our system, outline a little bit about OhioHealth goals, how we're looking to reduce some of the greenhouse gas emissions and all the hard work that it takes to get to where we want to be.
13:07
Yeah, so OhioHealth definitely sees this as an extension of our mission. Right, our mission is to improve the health of those we serve. We see environmental impacts directly impacting public health. And we talk a lot about health equity here at OhioHealth. And as I just mentioned, with the trees, there are definitely social disparities happening, that climate change exacerbates. So, when we think about it, we think it is actually the lancet has the best quote, they say that, "Climate change is the greatest health threat of the 21st century, and also the greatest opportunity to address social determinants of health." So for us, I think it is just part of doing our mission, not just within the hospitals, but also outside the hospitals as well. And that's kind of how OhioHealth is approaching all of this work. So from that perspective, we actually committed to signing a netzero climate goal. So we're the only hospital system and all of Ohio to have signed on to this commitment with the Health and Human Services. But we actually committed to going net zero by 2050. And that was signed off by our CEO, and supported by our board. So it's a goal that OhioHealth is really going after because we believe so strongly in its in its mission alignment. So it's things like energy efficiency, and landfill diversion and procurement work and green transportation and how we build our buildings. That's really my focus day to day but trying to get it integrated into our culture. So we have this foundation moving forward.
14:53
That's awesome. It's really kind of a pride moment, I think for us as a system to be that organization that says If we're gonna make it better for our patients, for our people, for our families and for our associates, it's awesome.
15:05
Yeah. Can you explain a little bit for those who might not be as into sustainability what net zero means? Yeah, so when we say net zero, we're basically looking at we are not emitting any greenhouse gas emissions are if we are, we are offsetting them with very few offsets. So things like planting trees could be an offset. But also, we're gonna have to get to the point where we have cleaner energy, right, our grid in Ohio is not clean. So every single ounce of energy we're using is coming from a dirty grid. So eventually, we have to shift over to a renewable grid. And for Ohio, that's that solar. That's, I think, the future of where our homes need to go, in addition to our businesses here, Very helpful. So OhioHealth has what's called an environmental preferable purchasing policy. How has that kind of helped OhioHealth approach to sustainability? Yeah, so we actually worked on the first time OhioHealth has ever had this environmentally preferable purchasing policy, which is a mouthful. I'll call it our EPP policy moving forward. We do this work alongside our supplier diversity manager. And what that means is we're essentially working together hand in hand to do responsible procurement. Right? We're looking at how can we go local with what we're procuring and to make a more resilient supply chain? How do we look at not producing waste in the first place? So working with our partners to do more reusable goods or recyclable goods? We don't have all of this trash to deal with on the back end? How do we purchase, you know, devices across a system, clinical and non clinical that are using less energy from the start. So how are we being intentional with our procurement efforts and our partnerships? So who are we working with to ensure that we are collectively achieving these goals? Because this is not an OhioHealth only goal. This is something we have to work with our partners on? And so how can we do it together? But then also, we're looking at healthy building materials. So we're looking at chemicals of concern, and our building materials, our furnishings, our medical supplies, how do we ensure that those supplies are created with you know, no chemicals of concern, so we're not, you know, negatively impacting those that interact with those materials on a daily basis and our community and our patients are not negatively impacted as we're trying to heal them.
17:41
You hit on waste management a little bit talk about some strategies when it comes to tackling wastes reducing landfill, obviously, with 15 hospitals, member hospitals, then we have partner hospitals, affiliated hospitals, how do you reduce landfill and food waste with all of the spaces that we have?
18:00
Yeah, so healthcare is just inherently very wasteful. It's just a healthcare as a whole. It's not OhioHealth specific. But everything in healthcare is single use. It's plastic wrapped in plastic, sterile environment is number one goal, right? So it is very difficult to do landfill diversion work when you're going up against priorities that are centered around single use. For us that looks like being creative and how we're recycling. So we have recycling and all of our public facing areas in the hospital. Our staff lounges have recycling, but also our operating rooms have recycling. So operating rooms in a hospital produce 40% of a hospital's total waste. So targeting spaces like that is really where we're going to hit a big impact. And we have a lot of really passionate associates and physicians that really rally around recycling. But like I said, the food waste where we have a million pounds of food waste hitting our Franklin County landfills every day. For us, that's 24/7 meals that are coming out of our kitchens going to feed our patients. It's a lot of food that we're producing on a daily basis. And it looks like you know, fresh prepped food, you know, it just it's going to come with food waste, and food scraps. So all of that food gets collected off out of the cafeteria or off of the patient trays. And all of our hospitals anywhere that has a kitchen has composting or some some version of food waste diversion. So we either have third party composting, we have food digesters in some of our kitchens. We even have animal feed as an option for our more rural regional hospitals. They'll send their food scraps out to local farms, because the goal here is landfill diversion but through those efforts, we've actually reduced our waste tremendously from the procurement angle. So once you see have all that waste, once you measure that it's really turned our nutrition team into, you know, how do we do better on the front end. And that's where we really saw changes, and how to better use our food, utilize it. And if we do have leftovers we can donate them too, so we do have food donation partners across the system. And it's something that when we're in our kitchens, oftentimes our associates in the kitchens don't have direct access to our patients, right? So they might not feel like they're directly connected to the mission. But even with someone that's in the basement, in the kitchen all day, they're really feel like they are connecting with the mission because no one likes to see food waste, right? No one wants to see that. And so it's actually also been a culture builder, in the cafeterias with our nutrition teams is really working together to reduce that food waste. I think that's been really nice to see.
21:06
I think that's the neat part of it. As you know, you're one person who's leading the charge, but you need buy in from the surgery team and the food team and everybody else that goes along with it, because one person is not
21:19
I'm not doing all this work by myself. Absolutely not. And it's our nutrition teams or, you know, facilities teams, it's our parking services and our EBS teams, it's, it's every single department across the system has probably had some kind of hand in sustainability at some point. And another team that's involved in that is transportation. Yeah, can you touch on that and how we're working towards that? Yeah, this is a cool project. We've been working on it for a few years now, what we've done actually is create an internal purchasing policy, that prioritizes low or zero emission vehicles. So anytime that we need to purchase a new vehicle for OhioHealth, it goes through a standard where we assess whether that vehicle can go all electric, that's if the or electric or low emissions, like like a hybrid vehicle, for example. So we have, for example, our lab courier services, and our protective services, they actually have all electric vehicles that are running our routes every day. So we think about really poor air quality days, when you see OhioHealth electric vehicle, it's actually zero tailpipe emissions. So OhioHealth, therefore has no contribution to the negative air quality coming from its vehicles. So something like that is really the connection between health and the environment. We even worked with our third party courier service Med speed, you might see those vehicles running around. Med speed actually worked with us to do they're all electric fleet. And it's the first all electric fleet running health care in the United States. And that's because we've really heavily invested in electric vehicle charging stations, we have over 80 charging stations throughout the entire system, the largest of any organization in Ohio. And we make sure that when we install them they are not only for our own associates, but for the public as well. And we currently provide them at no cost. And not really because we see this as an an equity solution. So ensuring that everyone has equal access to charging. So we really want to promote the technology of low or zero emission vehicles.
23:37
I think it's an understatement to say that it takes a lot of energy to run hospitals. It just does. So we know that energy efficiency is going to be crucial to the fight against climate change and everything that we're seeing and dealing with there. So talking about the steps that OhioHealth has taken to reduce some of that energy consumption and reduce some of the carbon footprint too.
23:57
Yeah, again, energy is inherent to healthcare. We use a lot of energy. And again, even just something like an MRI, we can actually see come up as a blip when we're tracking our energy consumption. So it is just very inherent day to day operations here. Our facilities teams and our construction teams have really been leading the work on this. We have an energy champion and our facilities team at every single care site. What they do is work with our energy engineers. And they assess where is some low hanging fruit that they can tackle for energy efficiency. So for example, we did an LED lighting retrofit across the entire system. So every single light and every single one of our locations turned into LED that was over 25,000 Lights took almost two years to do. But that has really decreased our energy consumption dramatically. We also are installing advanced lighting controls. So maybe if you walk in our stairwells, you know you you'll see the lights dim and come back on as you move through them. And then we also have done building control settings. So looking at our HVAC and our lighting, some parts of the hospitals are 24/7, but not all parts. And so if we can treat zone out the parts that are not 24/7, we can actually shift the temperature around the lighting around when fewer or no people are in the building. And so that therefore changes our energy consumption for that time. And we also are looking at how we're building our buildings. So Pickerington, for example, so far is going to be one of our most sustainable hospitals to date. And then Women's Hospital in our Grant expansion projects are going to be our most sustainable projects, by longshot are piloting a lot of really cool things for those projects. But even now, you know, our O'Bleness Hospital and our Mansfield hospitals are Energy Star certified. So our most regional hospitals are even investing in this and have really been successful and energy efficiency work. And across the entire system, we have reduced our energy consumption per square foot by 15%. Since 2018, and that's actually two years ahead of one of our internal goals. So we're doing amazing work, but we're definitely aren't close to net zero yet. We have a lot of work to do. But it's on our radar and and what we're doing is, you know, looking to the future. So how do we build our buildings, and our infrastructure currently to go all electric in the future? Because that's how you get to net zero as you go all electric, and then you add in renewables. So once you do the energy efficiency work, then you really look at, okay, this is as lean as we can get from an energy perspective, how do we then flip that over to a different energy source, and we gotta go all, all renewables. So easy, you know, easy, easy. But I have to say, you guys have made great progress. And I say, you guys, because I'm thinking about your team in particular. But like Marcus said, Buy in with the whole organization. But it is just impressive to even listen to the things that have already changed happened around here. And you can't get to that destination without knowing the destination and taking the steps there. So kudos to you guys for that. Really appreciate it. Yeah, it's been it's been exciting.
27:33
We're going to talk about you a little bit, we've talked about all your work. So we want to get to know you a little bit too. We always do this at the end of our podcasts, we'll get to know our guests a little bit more. So Allegra, if you had a superpower to help you in sustainability efforts, what would that be? And why would you choose that as
27:48
Is it an option to have all the money in the world? No, I think, I don't know. I think like I said, we have to go to all renewables. So I think if I had all of the land that I could use, it would go all electric, and we would go to renewables, something like solar. But I would do it not just for our own buildings, but I would do it for our communities around us. Because I think that's part of the equity and social justice work is really to ensure that we're bringing everyone along on this journey. And so I want to make sure that if we do something like solar, that our you know, communities can also be able to access that equitably as well. Yeah. And sustainability aside, what's the hobby or maybe an interest that you have that might surprise our listeners? We already talked about Taylor Swift before we started recording personal passion. But no, I do I'm an animal lover. So we actually foster dogs on the side, and I volunteered a cat rescue. So My poor husband has to deal with that. And our 1200 square foot house. We call it the Wiesler farms. So that's really what I'm doing in my free time is just, you know, collecting and hoarding all of the animals in my house herding cats. Day and night. I love it. Well, Allegra, thanks for joining us and those sharing those fun insights with us. We really appreciate it. It's been a pleasure getting to know the person behind the passion for sustainability at OhioHealth. Yeah, thanks so much for having me!
29:26
So much more than you even think, you know, I came in here thinking, Oh, I know what we're doing. And then to hear you talk about it. It is neat to know how much more is happening then, than we even realize and how much more is to come in the future to so we're excited to see where you take it.
29:38
Yeah, and we can't do it alone. So if anyone you know can do anything, they can have their own home and their own communities and help us here and we could all do it together.
29:49
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30:07
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