This past Monday I had the pleasure of participating in “Food on the Public Plate: Lessons from Canada, US and Denmark”, an event put on by Nourish and hosted by the MaRS Solutions Lab.

It was a chance to share the work UHN’s Energy & Environment Team has done looking into local food at UHN, assessing hospital readiness for climate change’s impact on food, as well as some of the existing and planned gardens we have.

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We saved 2 tonnes of ice packs from landfill, the equivalent of one hippopotamus.  image credit: Zoos Victoria

When 8 million tonnes of plastic is entering the ocean each year and 27 soccer fields worth of the world’s forests is being lost every minute, it may seem like being “sustainable” is far from reach. While it may be true that human activities are threatening the world as we know it, its not true that we aren’t doing anything about it.

Around the world, countries are developing solutions to cope with these non-linear issues. I would like to highlight in this blog post one of the efforts made during my short time here at the UHN to combine the economic, social and environmental aspects of sustainability –to try and find that sweet spot.

Well, I guess I should start by introducing myself and what I do here. My name is Rachel (a third year UWaterloo Biology student) and I am the current sustainability co-op student. Aside from the shut the sash program, which has continued to be an excellent energy (and cost) saving program, I have worked on the ice pack recycling program. Every week our research labs at UHN receive hundreds of frozen ice packs in order to keep perishables at their required temperatures. Most of these end up in landfill waste, or worse … biohazard bins! That literally means burning ice. A much better solution is to send them back to the vendor so they can be reused.

The thing is, new ice packs are cheap, and recycling ice packs takes effort and coordination (which means cost). This is an example of when companies have to look beyond just the economic benefit of sustainability. Sometimes the main driver is social responsibility … companies must be responsible for the waste they create, as that has a major effect on the environment. During my term, there have been many ups and downs with this program. In the end, after ironing out all the wrinkles, we have a fairly stable take back program with New England Biolabs (NEB), Cedarlane, and FroggaBio.

Below is a graph of all the ice packs sent back to date (excluding the NEB ones since they have an even more robust program that takes back all of the packaging including ice packs). From January to mid August, over two tonnes of ice packs were returned to vendors and diverted from landfill!

We saved over 2 tonnes of ice packs from landfill – the equivalent of 1 Hippopotamus!

This program is an excellent case of how when someone is willing to push for change and to find that sweet spot, companies can care for all three aspects of sustainability and great things can happen.

We had a secret steam room at Toronto Western Hospital.  If you knew where it was you could drop by and enjoy it, free of charge.  This place was hidden somewhere in the underground tunnel.  The heat was free from our high pressure steam and condensate pipes between the boiler plant and the hospital.  The temperature in this area was over 40°C (104°F) year around.  Most of the pipes were insulated, however,  there were still many exposed hot surfaces,  such as pipe hangers, anchors, supports, valves, condensate pumps, etc.  Due to the temperature difference between the high pressure steam (170°C or 338°F) and space, the heat loss was nonstop.

Figure 1: A secret steam room hidden at TWH.

Well, every cloud has a silver lining and this is how we got a free steam room.  This hot spot is hard not to notice.  The solution in the past was to remove the heat without touching the heat source.  People designed a ventilation system to draw fresh air from outside through 2 louvres and fresh air shaft,  then exhaust the hot air.

Later, when the New East Wing was constructed, the intake louvres and shaft were buried since they were right under the proposed building, so this place got hot quickly for almost 15 years.  Because of complaints, facilities management team installed 2 local recirculation fans, but they didn’t work well.  Without incoming fresh air, the heat had nowhere to go.

Figure 2: Infrared photo of same pipe hanger before and after removable jacket was installed.

With the help of our infrared camera,  we easily identified those hot spots. To fix them, we  added insulation.  Two types of insulation were used for different reasons: 

• Permanent fibreglass insulation for those pipe racks, anchors, etc. which do not require regular maintenance and service work.
• Removable jackets for other areas like valves, pumps, hangers and supports. The jackets have durable fibreglass cloth cover with Velcro fasteners and they can be removed and reinstalled quickly and easily for equipment service. 

Figure 3: Infrared photo of same pipe rack before and after permanent insulation was installed.

Even in the middle of the installation, people started to notice the temperature difference.  Once the job was done, the space temperature went back to normal and we don’t even need those 2 local recirculation fans any more.

With this project, we installed insulation at about 160 spots. Some of them are only as big as a CD (for those that remember what CDs are).  We will save about $5,700 of natural gas annually, which is equivalent of 38 metric tons of CO2 emission, or 8.3 cars removed from streets. 

Hello everyone! My name is Kyle and I am a fourth year student at UofT, studying Environmental Health, Environmental Ethics, and Bioethics. Now that my time working as a student intern with the Energy and Environment team is coming to a close, I thought I’d share some of the things I’ve learned over the past few months, as well as provide suggestions for making the most out of the final weeks of summer.

Looking at the past:
Putting Garbage in the Right Place: During my internship, I worked on different projects, such as the new employee orientation pages for the energy and environment team. This helped me brush up on what exactly goes into green bins, blue bins, and garbage bins. Now on the outside this may seem fairly simple, but there can be times when we just aren’t completely sure if something can be recycled or thrown in the garbage. For instance, while coffee pods may appear to be recyclable if cleaned properly, the City of Toronto considers them to be garbage since not enough people properly clean the pods before recycling (More here). So if you want to be a coffee eco-hero and make a difference, try using compostable coffee pods, or reusable coffee pods. It’s a little thing that can make a big difference in the long run.

Products and Their Safety: I also worked on completing the pollution prevention plan. Essentially, I looked at the chemical components of products that departments would use, and determined if any of the components of the products were potentially hazardous by looking at five different policies. These polices cover the national level, provincial level, municipal level, polices at UHN, and even a policy from California (Proposition 65). It was a tedious (but no where near as tedious as writing a 20 page report for school) but rewarding job that could be related to personal life. We use various products every day for various things, but we don’t always check to see if it is truly safe or environmentally friendly (at least it’s not something I typically lose sleep over). So while you may not want to look over five different policies to determine if your general purpose cleaner is safe, it may be worth looking over at least one or two, just make sure you’re not using anything that could be hazardous. It’s better to be safe than sorry!

Looking into the future:
With only one more month of summer left, I thought it would be helpful to suggest a few things we all can do to enjoy the final weeks of summer and keep the environment in mind.

Get out and enjoy Toronto! 
In such a busy city, there’s no shortage of things that you can do. Allan Gardens Conservatory is a wonderful spot to spend with family and friends when the weather is too hot or too rainy (and lately we’ve had a lot of those days). You’ll get to see plant life that you may have never seen before, which may just inspire you to get a plant for yourself. For the days with perfect weather, Toronto has many parks, such as High Park, to enjoy a nice relaxing picnic. There’s nothing like a little green and sunlight to brighten up your day!

Plant life at Allan Gardens Conservatory

UHN also has many gardens that we all can take advantage of before the cold weather comes. There’s a beautiful rooftop garden at TRI – University Centre, a wheelchair accessible garden at TRI – Bickle Centre, and the UHN Real Food Garden. (Read more here!)

Bike or walk when you can! 
The good weather will only stick around for so long before we (and by we I definitely mean me) start complaining about the cold temperatures and snow. I for one enjoy not having to wear a winter jacket wherever I go. There’s so much to see and enjoy in a big city like Toronto, so walking and biking around Toronto will not only allow you to see what Toronto has to offer, but will also provide you with some free exercise. It’s a win win situation! (Want to see more about biking? Read more here! Read even more here!)

And with that, my time with the Energy and Environment team has come to an end. It’s been a fantastic experience the last few months, and I’m grateful I got the opportunity to work with such a wonderful group of people!