Bon Secours earns Environmental Excellence Awards

For the third year in a row, Bon Secours St. Francis is being recognized for its commitment to developing a sustainable culture that will protect the environment and its communities’ health, now and for future generations.

Practice Greenhealth, a leading sustainability member organization for hospital networks, has once again recognized Bon Secours St. Francis Downtown Hospital and Bon Secours St. Francis Eastside Hospital with Partner for Change Awards. This recognition spotlights hospitals for superior performance in sustainability through a range of different programs and activities.

“As a Catholic Healthcare Ministry, one of our core commitments is to be good stewards of resources given to us and to help promote flourishing within our community through reducing our impacts on the environment and reflecting on how we can be more sustainable,” explained Joseph Mazzawi, Vice President of Mission at Bon Secours St. Francis. “We know that access to healthcare is important to health and well-being, but so is promoting a healthy community through reducing pollution and being a good neighbor.”

In health care, sustainability means looking at how our operations affect the health and safety of our environment as well as the health of our patients, staff, visitors, and the local community. Strategies to address sustainability at our organization include minimizing and recycling waste, addressing chemicals of concern, lowering energy and water consumption, sourcing food and products sustainably, and establishing environmentally preferable purchasing criteria. At Bon Secours, we know sustainability is essential to better care for our patients, communities, and planet.

In recent years, we have made great strides toward reducing our impact on the environment, and we are committed to doing even more. Some of our sustainability projects include:

• Offering gardening classes to community members
• Donating unused meals to Loaves and Fishes to distribute to food partners in the
  community who help feed the hungry
• Adding reusable water bottle refill sites throughout our hospital campuses
• Hosting drug take back events that have collected 151 pounds of medications to prevent
  them from ending up in landfills or the water system

“In a shifting health care landscape, a focus on sustainability can help build resilience while better protecting the health of patients and the community,” said Gary Cohen, Practice Greenhealth founder. “Bon Secours St. Francis Health System demonstrates the kind of leadership, innovation, and performance that can drive the entire health sector toward more environmentally responsible practices.”

The Partner for Change award is one of Practice Greenhealth’s Environmental Excellence Awards given annually to honor health care’s achievements in sustainability.

About Practice Greenhealth

Practice Greenhealth is a nonprofit membership organization founded on the principles of positive environmental stewardship and best practices by organizations in the health care community. Practice Greenhealth provides information, tools, data, resources, and expert technical support on sustainability initiatives that help hospitals and health systems meet their health, financial, and community goals.

About Bon Secours St. Francis

Bon Secours St. Francis is part of Bon Secours Mercy Health, one of the 20 largest health systems in the United States and the fifth-largest Catholic health system in the country. The ministry’s quality, compassionate care is provided by more than 60,000 associates serving communities in Florida, Kentucky, Maryland, New York, Ohio, South Carolina, and Virginia, as well as throughout Ireland. Bon Secours St. Francis provides compassionate medical care to thousands of area residents through Bon Secours St. Francis Downtown and Bon Secours St. Francis Eastside, as well as a network of primary and specialty care practices, and ambulatory care sites across the Greenville region. Consistent with its commitment to serve each patient with dignity, BSMH provided more than $600 million dollars in community investments across five states in 2021, ensuring that cost is not a barrier to health care for our patients in need. In addition to charity care, BSMH invests in programs that address chronic illness, affordable housing, access to healthy food, education and wellness programs, transportation, workforce development and other social determinants of health that directly affect the communities we serve. The mission of Bon Secours St. Francis is to extend the compassionate ministry of Jesus by improving the health and well-being of our communities and bring good help to those in need, especially people who are poor, dying and underserved. For more information, visit BonSecours.com.