Green Operating Room—Current Standards and Insights From a Large North AmericanMedical Center

Green Operating Room—Current Standards and Insights From a Large North AmericanMedical Center

Health care alone accounts for nearly 10% of this energy expenditure. Within hospitals, operating rooms (ORs) produce a disproportionate amount of greenhouse gases and disposable waste and consume an inordinate amount of energy. Here we seek to describe current initiatives from the literature and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) related to energy consumption and waste management. Numerous groups have sought to push the health industry forward in the OR by reducing energy consumption, reducing waste production, and recycling or reprocessingmore single-use items. Likely the easiest changes to implement include individual institution-level cultural changes such as switching halogen lights to LED lights, educating employees on proper waste disposal, and decreasing waste overall, as well asensuring that anesthesia professionals are conscientious of safe but eco-friendly anesthetic gas use.