Discover how St. Joe's Healthcare plans to reach 40% Emission Reduction Goal Ahead of the Curve

"We are excited to spotlight healthcare leaders who are making significant strides in sustainability. In this interview, we turn our attention to St. Joseph's Hospital, where Vice President of Development, Corporate Services, and Chief Sustainability Officer Karen Longstaff exemplifies outstanding leadership in greening healthcare. In the fall of 2024, St. Joseph's received the International Hospital Federation (IHF) Silver Awad -  for the Seddiqi Holding Excellence for Social and Environmental Responsibility.

Karen, congratulations on the recent IHF award win. We are keen to understand the practical steps you shared that earned this recognition, and how the sustainability journey at St. Joe's originally got started.

Karen Langstaff, Chief Sustainability Officer, St Joes.

Karen Langstaff (St. Joe's): Thank you. It was wonderful to be able to accept this award on behalf of St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton

Marie Cresswell: That’s fantastic. We’re keen on learning more about what you did to get that award and what your sustainability journey looks like.

Karen Langstaff: The main thing that we did was just shared practical advice on our journey. It really started with pulling together our Green Team back in October of 2022.

Members of the St. Joe’s 2024 Green Team. The Green Team was formed in 2022 and is an interdisciplinary group of members across our organization, all with a passion for advancing environmental sustainability and stewardship across St. Joe's. The Green Team has been essential to the development and implementation of the hospital’s sustainability action plan.

Marie Cresswell: That’s great. How did you get the ball rolling and engage staff and encourage them to adopt sustainable practices in their daily routines?

Karen Langstaff: We provided an open call for Green Team members across our organization. We now have representation pretty much from across all departments. Our team is made up of frontline staff, leadership, physicians, and patient family advisors, and it is unlimited—we now have up to 35 members. We set out a clear plan in the form of a Sustainability Action Plan for the fiscal year. We write down all the initiatives, group them into pillars, and then monthly, we get together to look at how well we’re meeting At them, where we’re on track, and where we’re going off track. This process, and having a really keen focus, keeps people accountable. At the end of the year we prepare a report to show how well we met our plan/targets. And we share our plan and reports to highlight our work and the changes we’ve made, which have been quite substantial.

In terms of waste management and staff behavior, we have a waste committee sub-group. We’re trying to share more information about where our waste goes. We’ve changed all of our garbage bins so it's clearer what waste goes into which bin —we’ve used actual pictures  of containers and waste from our cafeteria, to clearly show people what to dispose of into which container.

We developspecific targets, for each waste stream. We're done audits and noticed too many batteries in our garbage, so we are increasing the number of battery disposal units and reinforcing with staff the need to dispose of batteries in the appropriate container. Our plan is to increase the batteries diverted from landfill by 5%.  We also try to get our message across through use of our  hospital newsletter, where we share what’s been discussed at our meetings to spread awareness and education.

Marie Cresswell: What challenges has St. Joe’s faced in implementing sustainability goals?

Karen Langstaff: One of the obstacles is capacity. Most people are interested in sustainability efforts but their existing job gets in the way of the time needed to develop and implement initiatives.  

A key advantage for us is that we have a Building Services Energy Specialist who is a building automation system expert, with a focus is on sustainability. He assesses ideas, determines what is easy, low-hanging fruit that can be done without any funding, and identifies things that require capital. When we need capital, we have to put together clear business cases to show how we are going to reduce not only our greenhouse gas emissions but also the dollars saved in natural gas consumption, which can then help pay for the projects.

Marie Cresswell: Speaking of those metrics, what metrics do you use to measure the success of your initiatives? It sounds like you have a good handle on your numbers.

Karen Langstaff: As a result of our initiatives completed to date  we've been able to achieve reductions natural gas consumption; green house gas emissions; electricity consumption:

• Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Reduced by about 20% up to this year.

• Natural Gas Consumption: Reduced by 20%.

• Electricity Consumption: Reduced by about 8%.

• Energy Use Intensity (EUI): Reduced by over 15% since 2016 due to energy conservation measures.

Marie Cresswell: Impressive Numbers, Karen.  What stands out the most on the building side, particularly where you're getting most of your energy savings?

Karen Langstaff: The most effective for us was  optimizing our building automation system (BAS)—putting in measures where things shut off and start up instead of going continuously. We’ve also done all some of the low hanging fruit like replacing over 18,000 lights to LED installations. We’ve installed CO2 exhaust systems in our parking lot, boiler economizers, blow down heat recovery systems, and conducted steam trap audits.

This year, however, we are implementing a major project: our Boiler Heat Recovery project. This project alone will result in a savings of 20% of natural gas and greenhouse gas emissions, which is just over 3,000 tons of CO2 equivalents.

Marie Cresswell: Can you explain that project further?

Karen Langstaff: At our most acute site, we have five boilers that heat water and steam for heating buildings and sterilizing equipment. We are installing a condensing flue which captures about 90% of the heat those steam boilers now send out to the atmosphere, and we’re using that heat to heat water. This involves making changes to our air handling units, including heat exchangers, control valves, and meters of piping.

This will significantly reduce our steam demand, which reduces annual natural gas consumption and GHG emissions. It’s a win-win-win-win because it also cuts the water and boiler chemical we use, and reduces particulate matter and nitrous oxide released into the atmosphere. We expect to reduce the use of two of our five boilers, leading to lower maintenance and lower parts replacements over time. We are very excited to have it implemented by the end of this calendar year.

Marie Cresswell: How does the hospital collaborate with the local community to promote sustainability beyond its walls?

Karen Langstaff: We work with external groups like IESO (participating in the Sustainability Energy Management, or SEM, project). We also participate with Mohawk Medbuy, our group purchasing organization, where we sit on their  ESG committee. I am also on the Health Service Organization Accreditation Advisory Committee for Climate Change, and we partner with McMaster University .

Marie Cresswell: Looking ahead, what are St. Joe’s most ambitious sustainability goals?

Karen Langstaff: We are actually going to meet our sustainability goal of reaching a 40% reduction by the end of this year, ahead of our 2030 target. Now our focus is on what’s next—how do we work towards net zero?

This "next level" requires significant capital, so we need to engage a real expert to help us with that next master sustainability plan. We will look at things like renewable energy discussions, potentially putting solar voltage on our surface parking lots, and exploring using sewage as a means to heat water.

We are also launching a new project with ERM (Environmental Resources Management) called the Generation of New Patient Pathway module data project. They will lookat a number of different patient pathways (medicine, surgical, ambulatory) and calculate what we are using in terms of energy, supplies, transportation. This will enable us to assess which pathways contribute most to waste and greenhouse gases, allowing us to focus on where we can make changes to reduce that impact.

Marie Cresswell: That’s excellent. Finally, why is this important to you and St. Joseph’s team?

Karen Langstaff: Given Healthcare is both a responder to and contributor to climate change — responsible for nearly 5% of global emissions, yet also on the frontlines of climate-related health crises. I think this puts a responsibility on us to do what we can to reduce our impact on the environment. We are getting there but still have a long way to go.  

For more details about our environmental initiatives, visit Environmental Sustainability - St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton (stjoes.ca).