Go green. Some of you might consider that catch-phrase marketing buzz best suited for administrators who ride bikes to solar-paneled facilities in the Pacific Northwest. But we're here to tell you that the benefits of sustainability go beyond reducing carbon footprints and ending global warming. Going green can pay you back. Big time. Here are some ways to pad your bottom line with environmentally friendly solutions to everyday tasks.

1. Fluid-disposal systems
To truly understand the environmental and financial benefits of using direct-to-drain technology to collect fluid waste, consider the alternative. Fluid collected in disposable canisters has to be lugged out of the OR and poured into the hopper or solidified for disposal in red bag waste. Both options expose your staff to unnecessary contamination and back-injury risks. Suction canisters also account for a quarter of the regulated waste generated at hospitals, according to Practice Greenhealth, a non-profit organization based in Reston, Va., that promotes sustainability in health care.

Red bag waste costs about $0.28 per pound to dispose of, or 5 to 10 times more than non-regulated trash, says Cecilia DeLoach Lynn, MBA, LEED, AP, the director of sustainability programs and metrics for Practice Greenhealth. Adding solidified waste to the mix will send disposal costs soaring, she points out, noting that you also have to factor in the cost of the solidifier, which typically ranges between $5 and $30.

According to Practice Greenhealth, diverting solidified fluid from your red bag waste could save your facility tens of thousands of dollars. The organization says fluid solidifiers dry in about 5 minutes, which adds up to $680 in lost OR time during room turnovers (based on an estimated cost of $17 per minute). A hospital that performs 7,000 surgeries a year, says Practice Greenhealth, would spend a little more than $35,000 in red bag disposal costs (if each surgery generated 3 6-lb. canisters disposed of at $0.28 per pound) and $105,000 on solidifier agents (7,000 surgeries x 3 canisters per surgery x $5 per solidifier).

When you consider those potential avoided costs, the $15,000 or so that high-end direct-to-drain fluid management systems cost can be recouped rather easily and quickly, says Ms. Lynn. "You're also eliminating the front-end purchase of 6 to 8 disposable canisters per case, never mind the number you'd need for fluid-heavy cases like ortho procedures," she adds.

From an environmental standpoint, buying significantly fewer disposable canisters results in less red bag waste being shipped to landfills, fewer plastic canisters being produced and the negative impact of the supply chain delivering the canisters to your facility limited. "When you consider the cost savings associated with waste disposal and the elimination of employee safety risks," says Ms. Lynn, "the benefits of fluid management systems are fairly significant."

2. Rigid instrument containers
"What do we do with all our blue wrap?" That's a question we get frequently from readers who are looking to recycle the seas of blue flowing through their ORs. The wraps account for 19% of surgical waste, according to Practice Greenhealth. Surgical leaders at Brant Community Healthcare System in Ontario, Canada, asked themselves the same question after sending approximately 40,000 wraps to landfills in 2009 alone. They came up with a common sense solution: Do away with the stuff.

Members of the surgical staff dragged massive green bags filled with blue wrap to a health system board meeting to convince the higher-ups that a change was needed. It worked. Instead of wrapping sterilized instruments in disposable paper, now the staff uses rigid instrument containers for transporting tools to the OR. The transition keeps mounds of blue wrap out of local landfills, but it also saves the facility about $20,000 a year in wrap purchasing and disposable costs. In 2009, the health system's leadership estimated it'd take 2 years to recoup the capital investment in the rigid containers. By now, the containers are paid for and the savings — financial and environmental — continue.

The MetroWest Medical Center, with locations in Natick and Framingham, Mass., realized similar financial payback after making the switch to rigid containers. According to Practice Greenhealth, the medical center invested $75,000 in 2010 for 211 containers. This year, the medical center saved close to $30,000 in avoided blue wrap purchasing costs and diverted approximately 5,600 lbs. of blue wrap from the center's waste stream. That adds up to a 40% payback on the containers in the first year alone; the medical center anticipates savings of $84,000 and $233,000 at 5 and 10 years, respectively, following the initial investment.

3. Reprocessed single-use devices
Patricia Keenan, RN, CASC, ships the single-use burrs, blades and shavers used at the Orthopaedic Surgery Center of Clearwater to a certified reprocessing company to save her facility thousands.

The administrator and director of nursing at the Florida surgery center says her staff places used disposables into a drop box located in the decontamination room. A rep from the reprocessing firm stops by twice a month to package the used items and ship them away for refurbishing. Within 7 to 10 days, the items are returned to the facility, ready for use. Buying refurbished supplies costs 40% to 50% of the original manufacturer's price, says Ms. Keenan, which saves her facility upwards of $45,000 a year in disposable purchasing costs. It has also slashed 75% off of the amount of regulated waste — that's disposed of in large red boxes at a cost of $15 each — generated by the facility. "We used to produce 50 boxes of waste per week," she explains. "Now we're down to just 20."

Ms. Keenan is also quick to note the manpower hours she's saving by reprocessing single-use devices. Fewer supplies are purchased, meaning fewer purchase orders are filled out. "The less amount of time and the fewer people involved in the purchasing of items reduce monthly salary expenses spent on supply management," she explains.

Those hourly-wage savings are realized on the back end, too. One of Ms. Keenan's surgical techs spends 5 to 6 fewer hours each week organizing and disposing of those 20 boxes, freeing him up to focus more of his energy on patient-care responsibilities. And that, in turn, means Ms. Keenan doesn't have to hire as many PRNs to make up for the time he used to spend wrangling waste outside of the ORs.

4. Energy efficiency
Want to find more cost-effective ways to manage your facility's energy supply use? Ask for it, says Christian Miner, CEM, energy manager at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland. "Your support is probably the most powerful tool you can use" to turn sustainability ideas into money-saving realities.

Mr. Miner stresses the difference between energy conservation and energy efficiency. Energy conservation involves doing without to save money (turning lights off in unoccupied rooms, for example). Being energy efficient is more complicated. In fact, says Mr. Miner, true energy efficiency is almost impossible to notice. Would you know if your HVAC system or the devices you bought for the OR used 25% less energy? "When done right, you won't have to change your behavior or routines at all. You won't know you're being more efficient."

There's no silver-bullet for reducing your facility's energy usage, says Mr. Miner. It can be as simple as turning off computers at the end of the day, as involved as automating your HVAC system's pumps and motors to ask for less heat and cooling during off-hours or as high-end as installing new boilers and drives that ramp up and down heating and cooling levels to maintain temperatures in the most efficient way possible.

To assess which option is right for your facility, and just as importantly, which option you can afford, Mr. Miner suggests you contact your local energy provider and ask for a free audit. Believe it or not, most utility companies will send an engineering firm to look for the simple and not-so-simple ways that you can lower your energy costs.

Start by turning down heating and air conditioning in unoccupied ORs during overnight hours, suggests Mr. Miner, who says doing so between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. could shave 25% off what you'd spend to maintain the rooms throughout the night.

LED light designs have improved dramatically in recent years, says Mr. Miner. They use less energy, emit less heat and last longer than conventional halogen options. "Lighting improvement projects are always a good thing to do" because they're fairly straightforward, says Mr. Miner. He cautions, however, that limiting LED upgrades to the OR might not be enough to see serious returns on your investment. "If you also switch out every light in every hallway and office — now that's a project I'd be willing to back."

Look for capital equipment with the Energy Star label (energystar.gov), a classification sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency that identifies energy-efficient products. "Millions of dollars and a lot of research back that label," says Mr. Miner. "The products are cost-effective and save energy, so (the label) is reputable and always a good thing to look for." Perform a cost analysis based on annual energy usage to see how quickly the typically more expensive energy-efficient devices will pay you back, suggests Mr. Miner. Some states might even offer rebates for purchasing energy-efficient equipment. Check with your local energy provider to see if yours is one of them.

Mr. Miner has managed energy-improvement projects for facilities involving minor upgrades that cost $1,500 and major high-tech overhauls costing $2 million. Facility managers of both projects worked at opposite ends of the budget spectrum, but had identical interests: How long will it take to recoup the initial investment? One of OHSU's recent projects cost $100,000, according to Mr. Miner, but returned $120,000 in the first 12 months. He admits energy-related investments typically take many more years to pay off, but putting money into energy conservation is as close to a sure thing as you'll find in the current economy. "In today's markets," asks Mr. Miner, "where else can you invest with near-zero risk and expect 10% to 15% returns?"

Spread the word
"Going green goes beyond saving the environment," says Ms. Keenan. "I really think it's more about saving money." That's a message that needs to be discussed more often in more surgical facilities. "There's a lot of opportunity for savings that haven't been realized by many healthcare leaders," says Denise Choiniere, MS, RN, sustainability manager at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore. "Unfort-unately, the benefits of going green have yet to reach a lot of boardrooms."