Healthcare Goes Green (for Pets)
Pets can go green too.
With all the talk of green energy jobs and fuel-efficient vehicles recently, a local animal hospital has taken on the challenge to run a green business.
For the past year, Friendship Hospital for Animals in Northwest D.C. has been working to pay more attention to the environment in its day-to-day operations, starting small and working up to bigger projects to try to reduce the hospital's carbon footprint.
“The first move we actually made, which would seem not a huge one, was we got rid of all our paper coffee cups. We were going through 22,000 paper cups per year,” said Karen Mara, the hospital's administrator. The hospital now provides a reusable coffee mug to each of its employees, cutting down on about 20,000 of those cups—they still use paper cups for the coffee provided for clients.
The next step was to start a single stream recycling program, a process where recyclables don't have to be sorted before being recycled, to cut down on trash.
“Prior to doing that, we had two full trash dumpsters—those big 3-yard containers—that were emptied 6 days a week. We are now doing one of them, which is emptied 5 days a week. We've reduced basically our trash by half,” said Mara.
Other smaller efforts, like changing to energy efficient light bulbs, using recycled paper, and providing biodegradable pet waste bags, started the company's efforts to go green, but bigger projects are on the way.
Recycled Supplies: Reusable shopping bags, pens made from recyclable materials, and biodegradable pet waste bags are available for customers.
Mara said the hospital is looking into building a live roof, where different types of year-round plants are grown on the roof to offset carbon production and provide insulation for the building. Because that may be cost-prohibitive, Mara says that the other option would be to cover the roof with a custom-fitted white tarp in the summer to reflect sunlight and cut down on air conditioning bills.
While Mara says the new business practices came out of a sense of environmental responsibility, going green also is cutting some costs for the hospital.
Mara says they save $3600 a year by not using paper coffee cups, $1400 a year less on trash pickup, and will save much more on energy costs over the life of the new light bulbs. On the other hand, it costs the hospital about $6000 a year to run their new company intranet, which saves paper by storing training manuals and materials online, and the live roof would take twenty to thirty years to return the investment.
“We figured what we would do is that there would be some things that saved us money and some things that cost us money and hopefully at the end it balances out,” said Mara.
Friendship Hospital for Animals is also taking an active role in promoting green efforts outside their business by putting out a customer newsletter focused on green practices; by joining Carbonrally, a web-based individual and group competition to reduce carbon output; and by trying to put biodegradable pet waste bags in local dog parks. According to the Carbonrally website, Friendship Hospital for Animals has saved almost 18.5 tons of carbon dioxide emissions and is currently at the top of the Company League leader board.
The green efforts are striking a chord with employees and customers, which Mara says has been good for employee morale and customer perception of the business.
“I think that more people should be involved in taking care of our community, our environment, and just to know that my company actually really cares about it is just amazing,” said Rachel Lane, an employee at the hospital. She also says the company has made it easy to go green by choosing easy methods for recycling and providing incentives to the employees for making green choices.
“It's a great animal hospital, with great people, and it makes me feel even better that they're increasing their green efforts here,” said Meroue Heifetz, a customer from Washington, D.C.
Recycled Supplies: Reusable shopping bags, pens made from recyclable materials, and biodegradable pet waste bags are available for customers.
Mara said the hospital is looking into building a live roof, where different types of year-round plants are grown on the roof to offset carbon production and provide insulation for the building. Because that may be cost-prohibitive, Mara says that the other option would be to cover the roof with a custom-fitted white tarp in the summer to reflect sunlight and cut down on air conditioning bills.
While Mara says the new business practices came out of a sense of environmental responsibility, going green also is cutting some costs for the hospital.
Mara says they save $3600 a year by not using paper coffee cups, $1400 a year less on trash pickup, and will save much more on energy costs over the life of the new light bulbs. On the other hand, it costs the hospital about $6000 a year to run their new company intranet, which saves paper by storing training manuals and materials online, and the live roof would take twenty to thirty years to return the investment.
“We figured what we would do is that there would be some things that saved us money and some things that cost us money and hopefully at the end it balances out,” said Mara.
Friendship Hospital for Animals is also taking an active role in promoting green efforts outside their business by putting out a customer newsletter focused on green practices; by joining Carbonrally, a web-based individual and group competition to reduce carbon output; and by trying to put biodegradable pet waste bags in local dog parks. According to the Carbonrally website, Friendship Hospital for Animals has saved almost 18.5 tons of carbon dioxide emissions and is currently at the top of the Company League leader board.
The green efforts are striking a chord with employees and customers, which Mara says has been good for employee morale and customer perception of the business.
“I think that more people should be involved in taking care of our community, our environment, and just to know that my company actually really cares about it is just amazing,” said Rachel Lane, an employee at the hospital. She also says the company has made it easy to go green by choosing easy methods for recycling and providing incentives to the employees for making green choices.
“It's a great animal hospital, with great people, and it makes me feel even better that they're increasing their green efforts here,” said Meroue Heifetz, a customer from Washington, D.C.
