News Release: December 28, 2010

Presbyterian Hospital and Presbyterian Kaseman Hospital were awarded the Green Zia Environmental Leadership Program recognition at the silver level by the Secretary of the New Mexico Environmental Department.

This program recognizes Presbyterian’s accomplishments and commitment to environmental improvement in a number of areas including energy, water use reduction, waste reduction and recycling and environmental protection. Only five facilities statewide were approved for this recognition, two of the five were Presbyterian facilities.

Currently, Presbyterian has several programs underway focused on environmental improvements including energy management efforts (resulting in U.S. Environmental Protection Agency “Energy Star” awards in both 2009 and 2010); Waste Water Pretreatment programs (resulting in Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority, Pretreatment Gold awards in 2007, 2008 and 2009); Roof Replacements with increased insulation ratings and Energy Star designations; Condensate Recovery Programs to reduce waste water and chemical use; paper, cardboard, plastics and metals recycling programs; battery recovery and recycling program; and asphalt recycling.

In order to continue improving, Presbyterian has identified five goals to help them with their journey to achieve the Gold level recognition. These five goals are:

• Develop enterprise-level green purchasing program, which will focus on green purchasing directives
• Develop environmental “footprint,” a scorecard that will track our energy consumption
• Create employee “green team” to help generate and facilitate ideas on how to continually improve our environmental protection efforts
• Establish break room recycling programs for aluminum and plastic
• Track all waste streams and recycling materials for each facility to help identify opportunities for improvement

Presbyterian recognizes that it is a significant consumer of energy, water, medical supplies and a host of contracted services. With these improvements and programs, Presbyterian hopes to reduce the cost of energy consumption and disposal costs. This will provide an opportunity to reduce the cost of healthcare delivery, but also the opportunity to manage the environmental impacts to New Mexico communities and to future generations.

The Green Zia Environmental Leadership Program is a statewide environmental leadership program, administered by the New Mexico Environment Department. The program is designed for all types of businesses and organizations in New Mexico. They offer three levels of partnership – gold, silver and bronze. The overall goal of the program is to produce real environmental improvements, such as the reduction of air emissions, hazardous materials, water, energy use and pollution prevention.