Providence Swedish earns 25 national awards for environmental sustainability
Providence Swedish garnered the highest honors from the nation's premier organization dedicated to sustainability and environmentally preferable practices in healthcare.
Sustainability is core to our mission, and we’re proud to share that our environmental stewardship efforts have earned 25 Practice Greenhealth awards for our Providence Swedish facilities across Puget Sound.
Practice Greenhealth is the nation’s leading organization dedicated to environmental sustainability 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 local community.
We are also proud to say that three Swedish campuses — Cherry Hill, First Hill and Issaquah — were presented with Practice Greenhealth's Top 25 Environmental Excellence awards, the organization's highest honor for hospitals leading in sustainability performance and demonstrating comprehensive sustainability programs inherent to organizational culture.
Providence Swedish also came away with Practice Greenhealth's Circles of Excellence, Greenhealth Emerald, Making Medicine Mercury Free and Greening the Operating Room (OR) awards. This year’s accolades come on the heels of winning 16 environmental excellence awards across our region in 2023.
Strategies to address sustainability at our organization include minimizing recycling waste, addressing chemicals of concern, lowering energy and water consumption, sourcing food and products sustainably, and establishing environmentally preferable purchasing criteria. At Providence Swedish, 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.
Here’s a complete list of Providence Swedish's awards across Puget Sound:
Swedish First Hill – Top 25 hospitals in Environmental Excellence, Greening the OR Recognition, and Circles of Excellence Award for Transportation.
Swedish Cherry Hill - Top 25 hospitals in Environmental Excellence, Greening the OR Recognition, and Circles of Excellence Award for Climate.
Swedish Issaquah - Top 25 hospitals in Environmental Excellence, and six Circles of Excellence awards for Climate, Energy, Greening the OR, Transportation, Waste and Water.
Swedish Ballard - The Greenhealth Emerald Award, and Circles of Excellence Award for Transportation.
Swedish Edmonds - The Greenhealth Emerald Award, and two Circles of Excellence awards for Transportation and Climate.
Providence Regional Medical Center Everett - The Greenhealth Emerald Award, Making Medicine Mercury Free, and the Greening the OR Recognition.
Providence St. Peter - The Greenhealth Emerald Award and the Greening the OR Recognition.
Providence Centralia - The Greenhealth Emerald Award and the Circles of Excellence Award for Waste.
Award descriptions
The Top 25 Award is Practice Greenhealth’s highest honor, awarded to hospitals leading in sustainability performance and demonstrating comprehensive sustainability programs inherent to organizational culture.
The Circles of Excellence Award celebrates hospitals who have not only earned an award for all-around sustainability achievement but have also been identified as the top scoring programs for each sustainability category.
The Greenhealth Emerald Award recognizes outstanding hospitals from within the Partner for Change applicants. This competitive award recognizes the top 20 percent of applicants and is focused on advanced sustainability programs and exemplary scores in a range of categories.
The Greening the Operating Room Recognition honors facilities that have made substantial progress in reducing the impact of the surgical environment.
The Making Medicine Mercury Free Award recognizes hospitals that have virtually eliminated mercury from their facilities and have made a commitment to continue to be mercury free.
About Providence Swedish
Providence Swedish has served the Puget Sound region since the first Providence hospital opened in Seattle in 1877 and the first Swedish hospital opened in 1910. The two organizations affiliated in 2012 and today comprise the largest health care delivery system in Western Washington, with 22,000 caregivers, eight hospitals and 244 clinics. A not-for-profit family of organizations, Providence Swedish provides more than $406 million in community benefit in the Puget Sound Region each year. The health system offers a comprehensive range of services and specialty and subspecialty care in a number of clinical areas, including cancer, cardiovascular health, neurosciences, orthopedics, digestive health and women’s and children’s care.