Because the public health and environmental impacts of climate change are becoming more clear daily, there is a growing call to measure, track, and reduce organisations’ greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, health care facilities in Canada are vulnerable to climate change. Climate-related hazards are expected to create risks that can disrupt health care facility services and delivery.
Hospitals are often the largest water users in a community. Inefficient and non-productive uses of water continue to drive avoidable expenditures and debt accumulation for the construction, expansion, operation and rehabilitation of municipal and private water infrastructure. They also result in excessive energy consumption and contribute to the inefficient use of other resources.
Health care facilities are major producers of GHG emissions and often intensive users of water, yet many health care professionals are not aware of the environmental effects and many organisations do not rigorously monitor or limit their GHG emissions or water use. The unique challenge of delivering high quality health services while minimising environmental harm demands a specially tailored approach to improving awareness and encouraging adoption of better environmental practices.
To facilitate that change, this guide will provide health care organisations with a specialised package of educational materials, awareness tools and other resources.
Environment Canada’s EcoAction Community Funding Program provides financial support to community-based, non-profit organisations for projects that have measurable, positive impacts on the environment. It encourages action-focused projects that will protect, rehabilitate or enhance the natural environment, and build the capacity of communities to sustain these activities into the future. In keeping with Environment Canada’s national environmental priorities, the EcoAction Community Funding Program supports projects that address the following four themes: clean air (to reduce emissions that contribute to air pollutants), clean water (to divert and reduce substances that negatively affect water quality or to focus on water conservation and efficiency), climate change (to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change or to deal with the impacts of climate change, and nature (to reduce biodiversity loss, protect wildlife and plants, and protect and improve the habitat where they live). Learn more at: http://www.ec.gc.ca/ecoaction