We all have heard the SOS: the earth needs our help. Each day, we hear news of companies and organizations participating in and coming up with a myriad of various conservation and sustainability practices, and positive changes are indeed being made. But how does an individual begin? How significantly can individuals or families really contribute to the earth’s sustainability? The Green Team at Sacred Heart Hospital in Eau Claire, Wisconsin proves that small and sequential, persistent eco-habits can gradually yield considerable and amazing results.

Named after the patron saint of ecology, part of the hospital’s Franciscan tradition is a passion and reverence for the earth. In 2002, Sacred Heart Hospital established the Green Team, headed by Director of Hospitality Rick Beckler, who began what would later develop into a fierce and extensive green health practice, turning Sacred Heart from an environmentally friendly facility, into a nationally-recognized, "Green" facility.

Having been with Sacred Heart Hospital for 16 years and in healthcare leadership for over 35, Beckler is well aware of the value of a strong local community, in particular supporting local food growers and small businesses. Originally from rural Minnesota, he was influenced by what he saw going on around his hometown. “Big box stores started coming in, and the small local businesses started going out of the community. I developed a real passion for things local,” he says. “So when the Chief of Staff came to me and said, ‘it’s about time you did something about the environment,’ I already had a few ideas. We decided that we would get involved with strong sustainability, local food buying, focusing on those things within our community.”

Facing such a big task, Beckler began with, literally, a single step: eliminating single-use items. “Single-use items are those things used once and then thrown away,” he says. “We started to identify those items, beginning in the cafeteria.” Sacred Heart implemented all reusable silverware and china. “In the last year and a half, we’ve given reusable mugs to everyone that they can take back to our cafeteria. We started charging for single-use items, discouraging employees from using them.”

He saw another opportunity for conservation, and eliminated the bottled juices and sodas in the physician’s lounge and replaced them with fountain beverages. “We eliminated Styrofoam cups with the implementation of reusable mugs for our patients and employees. We went from having four coolers for bottled beverages down to one and eliminated 140 cases of Styrofoam per week.”

Next, he began looking at the hospital’s food waste and energy usage. “We dug deeper and found that food service is a big waste generator, and a big energy user. One of our garbage disposals, as it so happened, also went up in smoke at that time and we decided not to replace it. We sat down with our kitchen staff, and asked ourselves, ‘what do we do here’? We then consulted the Department of Natural Resources about what to do with our cold waste and they recommended we send it to a hobby farm, so long as no hogs or swine are on the farm. We knew someone in the area with such a farm, so that individual comes and picks up our cold food waste once a day.” From this practice, Sacred Heart Hospital prevents 2.2 tons annually from going down the garbage disposal.

Beckler looked at other foods in the cafeteria, such as meat waste. After speaking with a local food pantry, the St. Francis Food Pantry, he arranged for a group of volunteers from the hospital to take that food waste, bag it up and send it to the pantry on a daily basis. “Because of this program, almost 2 tons of food will not be going into a landfill or down the garbage disposal,” says Beckler. This program not only benefited Sacred Heart in their conservation efforts, but it proved to likewise benefit the St. Francis Food Pantry, and also to be one example of the mutually beneficial results from these conservation actions, which Beckler calls “the splinter effect”.

“Many needy people don’t have a place or the resources to cook, and to get food already precooked is a real bonus for them,” expressed Beckler. Every year the hospital donates more than 8,000 pounds of leftover food to the St. Francis Food Pantry. The fryer grease from the cafeteria kitchens is also outsourced to people who utilize it for fuel and heat. “We have people calling us every week asking for our grease,” says Beckler.

The Green Team also connected with Focus On Energy, a Wisconsin organization that helps businesses and residents with energy-renewing projects and energy efficiency management. “We had a light bulb sale for employees and doctors. In eight hours, we sold 1900 bulbs,” Beckler says, “we saved 4,500 barrels of oil in the lifetime of those bulbs.” The hospital took another step in energy conservation. “We used to buy coal to heat the building,” explains Beckler, “we switched over and now use natural gas.”

One of the biggest sustainability efforts came by involving the local farming community, another “splinter effect” action that benefits both the hospital and the local community. “We need to provide the healthiest food we can for our patients, and it was easy for me to look at local food for that,” explains Beckler. One of those ways primarily included obtaining food sources from the local community. He continues, “We went as deeply as we did into local food buying. We need to be good stewards in the community, good neighbors and good partners. All of our beef, pork, chicken, cheese, and produce is grown and raised here in the Chippewa Valley.”

The state governor even got involved, contributing a grant to form the local Producers and Buyers Co-Op. “It’s phenomenal to see our governor seeing this and agreeing with it,” confided Beckler.

Beckler is constantly on the lookout for possible ways to maintain ecological conservation, in any area: “We look at everything. We have one hybrid vehicle in our hospital car fleet, and we are looking at buying a second one. We have bike racks around our hospital campus, as well as nice bike paths, and we have tried to accommodate bicycles and we give incentives to employees who want to do those kinds of things.

“We recycle all of our tin, plastic, aluminum, and cardboard. The scraps of our shredded documents are used as pulp paper. All of our waste is picked up but when it goes off site, you still need to know where it is going. So we always check to see where our stuff goes.

“We even look for ways to conserve in our construction projects. For example, we recently installed new toilets in a patient wing. It was too easy to throw the old toilets in the dumpster, which would only go to the landfill. So we called a local gospel mission and asked if they wanted the toilets. You bet they did! When we bring all those parts and pieces together, it’s significant.”

The impact of Sacred Heart Hospital’s ecological initiative has trickled out into the community at large and has received enormous positive reception from the public. “Anyone who wants to learn or see what we do and put their own program into works is welcome,” said Beckler. “We’ve shared ideas with other organizations. Our mission is reverence to the earth, and if someone can learn from us, it helps the earth. There has been an outpouring of positive responses toward our hospital….we live our mission, we are eco-friendly, and we roll millions of dollars back into the local community. When we can practice sustainability and roll those kinds of dollars into the community, it’s fantastic.”

Beckler emphasizes the importance of the individual’s voice in the progression of sustainability efforts. “We as customers really drive this. We need to drive it as hard and fast as we can. Vendors in sustainable projects need to adjust to what the customer’s needs are. You are the driver of this car. Vendors will work with you and they will change what they do to accommodate your needs.”

Beckler and The Green Team have influenced the employees and patients at Sacred Heart Hospital in a positive way. “It came down to people stopping and asking themselves, ‘is this a single-use item or multi-use item? Can we use it again?’ It’s amazing what we’ve found in our sustainability programs and the support from employees, patients, and the community. Our CEO and administration staff have always been there to help with ideas, money, and support, too,” he says.

Contributing in such a productive, positive way has been an educational and influential experience for Beckler, as well, and he continues to help Sacred Heart Hospital implement more and more means of sustainable action. “This has been the most fun, most beneficial things I have done in my career,” he says. “This has been a learning process, getting to know people in the community, and seeing the pride they have for what they produce.

“When you get going with sustainability, it snowballs. We are always looking for ways to continue sustainability. We are open to every single little idea that people have.”

Sacred Heart Hospital is located at 900 West Clairemont Avenue, Eau Claire, WI  54701 and can be found online at http://www.sacredhearteauclaire.org/.