Recently we announced the official formation of the Environmental Stewardship Team.
In case you weren’t able to join us for the August open meeting, we wanted to update you as things are off to a quick start!
Working groups have been formed
The Environmental Stewardship Team (call us ESTeam for short) determined early on that to ensure a clear path forward it would be best to break the larger team into smaller working groups that would allow each group to focus in on a particular area of interest.
Four working groups have since been formed and key members have stepped up to take on the positions of Team Leads. Members within the broader team (and the rest of PHC!) are welcome to participate in multiple working groups, and assist as full time members (a commitment of at least one year), or in an ad-hoc capacity (assisting on a project specific basis), to help move the dial on environmental sustainability initiatives.
And new members are welcome! If this work sounds intriguing, please consider stopping by the next meeting on September 12. Details can be found in the connect calendar.
Now, let’s meet the groups
Waste
Team Leads: Karmen Wong and Leyla Khosrovpour
The Waste Working Group will be focusing on finding ways to reduce the use of products and disposable materials at PHC, as well as improving recycling and waste diversion (hint: this means the amount of waste diverted away from landfills and into recycling or compost). They will be looking for ways to increase “re-use” and “re-purpose” processes for items and are even hoping to introduce a life-cycle approach to the procurement process. This would mean considering ALL of the costs of an item, from purchase to disposal, i.e., environmental, manufacturing, use and disposal.
Food
Team Leads: Dr. Eileen Wong and Ramses Prado
This working group is concerned with increasing and encouraging sustainable food choices (which we are fortunate to say Dr. Wong has some experience with already), local food sourcing, culturally-appropriate food choices (think initiatives like the Exploring Indigenous Foodways Project) and food waste reduction through a lens of improving food quality and providing patients and residents with more of what they want to eat here at PHC.
Education & Communication
Team Lead: Suzan Lee
These folks will be guiding the broader team on educating the PHC community on environmental sustainability in health care, working together to create learning materials for distribution to staff and overall ensuring PHC is up to date on all things ESTeam. Expect to hear more from them soon!
Measurement & Evaluation
Team Leads: Theresa McElroy and Aggie Black
This team is all about the numbers. They’ll be focused on identifying relevant metrics and targets to help ensure that as the team works through their various initiatives, there are clear ways to measure success and ways of identifying areas for improvement. They’ll also be looking to establish partnerships with PHC researchers and will be putting together easily digestible reports that demonstrate the impact the ESTeam is having in order to hold us all accountable and inform our future efforts.
What’s next?
The working groups will spend the next couple of weeks connecting, and determining their priorities for the coming months. Then, on September 12 at the next ESTeam meeting, the groups will be sharing the details of their plans.
If any of this piques your interest, the September 12 meeting is an open one and we’d love it if you stopped by. You can learn a bit more about what the ESTeam is looking to accomplish, and if you’d like, you can get involved in some of the initiatives! Checkout the meeting details in the connect calendar.
