Tuesday, January 14, 2025
Since last month, visitors to the Long Island Jewish Valley Stream Hospital have been hard-pressed to spot plastic water bottles on site. The reason is simple, but consequential: the Franklin Avenue facility officially phased out single-serving plastic water bottles and other single-use plastic products for its patients and staff.
Joe Dobias, director of food and nutrition at Northwell Health, says slashing the hospital’s plastic bottle consumption down to effectively zero is not only smart from a cost-saving perspective but creates a greener way to hydrate.
“Plastic water bottle waste was somewhere in the realm of 35,000 pieces a week,” Dobias said. “This equates to about a quarter million dollars a year in expense.”
In lieu of the single-use bottles, the hospital — staffed with roughly 1,600 employees — has installed over 50 water dispensers throughout the building. Water bottles have been swapped for reusable, lightweight, shatter-resistant plastic cups that can be sanitized and reused. Every LIJ Valley Stream staff member received a branded reusable water bottle and coffee mug and rewards like unlimited free coffee in the cafeteria for those using their mugs.
Dobias said the switch, dubbed Operation Hydration, is projected to save the hospital about $150,000 a year.
It also represents the most ambitious move of the Northwell Health system — the hospital’s parent company — to curb its share of plastic waste pollution. The United States generates over 42 million metric tons of plastic waste annually, according to government reports, but only about 9 percent is recycled.
Experts note plastic doesn’t biodegrade like other materials—it can take up to 1,000 years to break down. In the meantime, it accumulates in the environment, choking marine wildlife, contaminating soil and groundwater, and posing serious health risks.
“We as a company have a huge impact on the Northeast and we have to start being a lot more socially responsible,” Dobias said, adding that the long-term plan is for other hospitals and medical centers across Northwell to follow suit.
“With 16 hospital sites and 80 or 90,000 employees, plastic waste was really a problem we could no longer ignore,” he said.
Although patients, as “captive audiences,” acquiesce to the hospital’s upgraded services, employees — the biggest contributors to the hospital’s plastic waste — are going through a personal learning curve to make single-use plastic a thing of the past.
“Everybody likes to do what they do daily. That’s why we kind of put these incentives out front,” Dobias said. “We’ve done a lot of messaging throughout the building with open roundtables, formal presentations, you name it.”
Dobias noted that a key concern among staff was whether public water could match the drinking quality of bottled water. The results of a 50-page study by a water testing company whose name was not disclosed showed that bottled water was no better in terms of quality than tap. Filters installed in the watering stations will also add an extra layer of protection, but there is no question in Dobias’ mind that work culture habits are hard to change.
“It’s been really more of a cultural revolution than an eco-friendly revolution,” he said.
Have an opinion on this article? Send an email to jlasso@liherald.com.
