Sustainability and Environmental Health

Healthy people need healthy environments.

Our award-winning sustainability program advances health and wellness and builds resilience in our health system through the protection and thoughtful use of shared resources, reduction of carbon emissions and through engaging employees and leaders at all levels to set and reach our sustainable goals.

This is particularly important given that health care institutions create about 10 percent of all carbon emissions nationally. Furthermore, we are committed to expanding sustainability beyond our walls by improving community health and prosperity, with a devotion to equity, resilience and climate protection.

We base our practices on the belief that:

Environmental Health = Human Health

MetroHealth has adopted a collaborative, system-level and community-focused approach to sustainability. This commitment is best exemplified by our effort to form the Clark-Fulton/MetroHealth EcoDistrict, the first health care-anchored certified EcoDistrict in the nation. EcoDistricts is a national collective impact model for creating comprehensive, measurable change at the neighborhood level. Some of the specific activities we are undertaking include:

Utilizing our Community Advisory Councils to further assess environmental impacts.

• Linking our sustainability goals with efforts to address social drivers of health.
• Further advancing our pioneering efforts to address the lead paint crisis.
• Enhancing the use of green products and services across the supply chain.
• Installing a composting program at Main Campus to divert food waste from landfills.
• Investigating opportunities to reduce toxic chemical use across the health system.
• Tracking relevant data to guide policy and practices moving forward.

Moving forward, we are focused on achieving compliance at the highest possible level with the recently published standard from The Joint Commission regarding emissions and waste reduction.

We are also engaging peers including the City of Cleveland, Cuyahoga County and Practice Greenhealth to augment our efforts and further implement best practices.

Our ultimate goal is to create more holistic, community-centric health care that strengthens our local communities by making them healthier and more prosperous. This is the central purpose of our sustainability strategy as well as the primary focus of all activities at MetroHealth.