It's easy to turn your practice green

Practice Management. By Julie A. Jacob, AMNews staff. May 28, 2001.

As a doctor practicing in today's stressful health care environment, you probably feel like you don't have the time or energy to think about much else other than caring for your patients, staying financially solvent and wading through paperwork.

In fact, a goal like making your office greener and more environmentally friendly probably ranks near the bottom of the list of things to do in your practice. But when it comes to helping the environment, little things can mean a lot -- and save you some money, too.

For example, consider the environmental impact of recycling soda pop cans instead of tossing them in the garbage. Compared with making aluminum from raw materials, recycled aluminum uses 50% less energy and reduces air pollution by 74% and water pollution by 35%, according to data from Earth Communications Office, an organization in Santa Monica, Calif., that promotes environmental awareness.

Or consider this statistic: It takes two to three tons of trees to make one ton of new paper, but one ton of paper can be recycled into one ton of new paper. In addition to saving a lot of trees, recycling paper uses 90% less energy and cuts air pollution by 95% and water pollution by 97%.

So if you want to make your office a little greener, here are some tips to help you and your staff get started.

1. Recycle paper, aluminum cans, plastic bottles and ink printer cartridges.

Unlike years past, when recycling meant sorting newspaper, cans and plastic by hand and hauling them down to a recycling center, most cities today have a program that requires you to do nothing more than put the recyclables in colored trash bags (often blue bags) and set those bags out on the curb with the rest of the garbage, said Lisa Day, ECO's project manager. [...]