Samantha Pender, March 4, 2021

With West Park well on its way to becoming a new integrated campus of care, continuing to minimize the environmental impact in the future has been one of the top priorities. And The Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care has taken notice.

At the end of 2020, West Park’s sustainability efforts were recognized with one prestigious award and two honourable mentions. The Centre won the Green Leadership award for the Year of 2019, and received honourable mentions in the Pollution Prevention category and the Green Hospital of the Year category.

The Green Hospital Scorecard is a comprehensive health care benchmarking tool that measures energy and water conservation, waste management and recycling, corporate commitment, and pollution prevention. Participating hospitals report on their environmental and sustainability initiatives through an online questionnaire and the resulting Scorecard summarizes their environmental performance relative to their peers. 

Kendra Rainford, Operational Readiness Coordinator for Campus Development and Sustainability Coordinator, has been leading West Park’s sustainability efforts as chair of the Environmental Sustainability Committee for four years, and is looking forward to supporting the planning of an environmentally sustainable future at the Centre.

“It’s really great to have our sustainability efforts for West Park recognized by The Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care, and I’m really proud of the work our committee has accomplished so far,” Rainford says. “But we have big plans going forward, and I’m hoping these aren’t the last of our awards.”

This is West Park’s second consecutive year taking home a top award, and third award from The Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care overall. West Park has a long-standing history of environmental awards that can be found here: https://www.westpark.org/AboutUs/AwardsandHonours.

While the work accomplished by the Environmental Sustainability Committee so far has captured the attention of many, the committee is forging onward to make a greener and brighter future for West Park’s new hospital, honouring West Park’s longstanding green legacy and commitment to environmentally sustainable healthcare operations.

West Park’s award was presented at the Coalition’s virtual awards ceremony in December 2020 by Executive Director Neil Ritchie.

The Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care is recognized as Canada’s premier, integrated green resource network driving leadership in environmentally-sustainable health care practices and a catalyst for environmental change by encouraging the adoption of multiple environmental principles and practices to reduce the Canadian health care sector’s ecological impact while protecting human health.

“The healthcare industry has a huge environmental footprint, and we really want West Park to be at the forefront of trying to reduce that,” Rainford explains. “It’s incredibly important to us that our future operations and practices align with our new state-of-the-art, energy efficient infrastructure in the new hospital.”