UH Parma Medical Center Honored for Exemplary Environmental Excellence

PARMA, Ohio – University Hospitals Parma Medical Center maintained its perch as a leader in environmental excellence by placing in the top tier of more than 1,000 health care facilities across the country honored by Practice Greenhealth as a Partner for Change. The nation’s leading organization dedicated to environmental sustainability in health care gave special recognition to UH Parma for reducing food waste.

UH Parma was among only 10 hospitals in the U.S. honored by Practice Greenhealth with the Food Circle of Excellence Award for its comprehensive efforts to purchase sustainable, locally sourced food and beverages, educate the community, compost and reduce food waste.

Through an innovative program called WasteWatch at all of its food service locations across the 21-hospital UH health system, site team of Sodexo – the food service provider for UH – measure food waste, capturing data and acting upon intuitive analytics to drive behavioral change to help end avoidable food waste. Employees log into the WasteWatch program to weigh food waste such as fruit and vegetable trimmings and unusable leftovers and adjust amounts purchased and prepared based on usage. The software tracks transactions and highlights their financial and environmental impact.

WasteWatch helped UH hospitals prevent 223,000 pounds of food waste, conserve nearly 2.5 million bathtubs of water and save more than 186,000 meals in 18 months from late 2020 until the spring of 2022. And UH Parma was instrumental in this effort.

“UH Parma Medical Center remains a health care leader for its continued focus on finding opportunities to reduce, reuse and recycle,” says Jay Loughner, Manager of Food & Nutrition Services and long-time leader of the Sustainability Committee at UH Parma. “We work continuously on engaging our staff to influence a culture of sustainability.”