Integrated Environmental Management in Hospitals

Because of their legal assignment to identify and cure diseases, and to prevent them from getting worse, especially hospitals have a special responsibility towards the environment.

In nearly all areas of a hospital it is possible to relieve the environment by environmentally sound measures without neglecting medical standards. To assure a sustainable approach, ecological processes have to be included into the general management of the hospitals by means of integrated environmental management.

This was already known in 2001 when the partnership of hospitals in Germany, Italy, France and Austria decided to apply for the project „Integrated Environmental Management in Hospitals“ in the framework of the programme LIFE Environment to develop and realise it in a transnational partnership.

Since the beginning the main focus was put on the participation of the utmost number of staff members in the development of environmental protection in hospitals.

After the project all four hospitals do possess an EMAS-compliant management system and already have introduced different successful measure for environmental protection. These systems that have thus been introduced are the basis for hospitals to further develop towards a comprehensive environmental protection. In this project it was the first time that southern European hospital were certified according to the European EMAS-standards, so it could be proved that that this cost-saving environmantal management approach can also be transferred to other countries. The system was introduced by a specially designed eLearning and eCoaching system, available in DE, IT and FR language.

In 2006 project was awarded as best LIFE ENVIRONMENT project. The project DVD produced by the European Commission can be ordered via blinc. Major blinc partners were responsible for the project and blinc was in a way a consequence from this successful project.

This is the laymen report: Layman