A solar panel installation at Princeton Medical Center (PMC) and efforts to advance various recycling initiatives are on this year’s sustainability agenda at Penn Medicine Princeton Health.
The solar project – which would be the second such installation on the PMC campus – is proposed to cover a portion of staff parking lot P10. The project would produce significant clean energy for the hospital campus and also provide space for electric vehicle (EV) charging stations, said Greg Evans, Penn Medicine’s corporate director of sustainability.
Princeton Health is reviewing proposals from several photovoltaic solar panel providers and hopes to award a contract in the late spring and begin construction this summer, Evans said. Also this year, Evans said, Princeton Health plans to:
- Expand the collection of single-use surgical and patient-care devices for reprocessing. More than 23,000 single-use devices – including pulse oximeters, compression sleeves, and lateral transfer mattresses – were collected in 2022 for reprocessing and sterilization so they are safe to reuse. Princeton Health repurchases the devices at a significant cost savings.
- Install a machine to recycle xylene, an aromatic hydrocarbon used for tissue processing, staining, and coverslipping in the histology laboratory. The machine is expected to nearly eliminate Princeton Health’s disposal of spent xylene.
- Collect food waste at PMC that will be recycled into renewable energy by a biofuel company in nearby Trenton, N.J. The effort will greatly reduce Princeton Health’s landfill disposal of food waste, a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.
These efforts will build on previous Princeton Health successes, including an effort with the Department of Surgery that removed tons of cardboard every year from Princeton Health’s waste stream and changes in the Department of Anesthesia that helped to reduce the usage and emissions of environmentally harmful anesthesia gases such as desflurane. Efforts to promote environmental stewardship and reduce greenhouse gas emissions are prioritized throughout Penn Medicine.
Practice Greenhealth, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing sustainability in health care, reports that the health care sector accounts for 8.5 percent of the nation’s total greenhouse gas emissions. The Environmental Protection Agency ranks inpatient health care as the second-largest commercial energy user.