In this week's Going Green, Terry Ettinger tells us how Upstate Medical University is making the effort to reduce the use and purchase of bottled water.

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“There’s a challenge in the clinical environment to maintain patient care and practice sustainability, there seems to be an inherent conflict in the minds of many people. We’re proving that to be untrue. We’re taking a holistic approach and doing a number of things,” said Thomas Pelis, Assistant Vice President for Facilities and Planning of Upstate Medical University.

Such things as reducing the use of purchased bottled water.

Pelis said, “And what we did was retrofit, where appropriate, all the water fountains throughout the entire university including in the hospital with gooseneck faucets and with dual filters, including carbon filtration units so people have a free readily available resource to get clean, fresh water and thereby eliminate their desire or demand for bottled water.”

Thomas Pelis said they encouraged people to make the switch.

“They use recyclable or reusable mugs that we sold at a steeply discounted price. We offered plastic, we have stainless steel, and we have a variety with logos that are supplied to our employees,” said Pelis.

And the employees have responded well.

Pelis said, “Very well. It was a struggle to get a paradigm change at the beginning but people have responded very well. We have a little more work to do with some of the vending machines because those are through an outside vendor and our food service has some limited bottled water but we’ve reduced the usage of bottled water by over 90 percent on the University.”

Plus people are making a tangible contribution to improving the environment.

“That one bottle that goes into a landfill is equal to one pound of carbon dioxide in the environment so for every bottle that doesn’t land in a landfill reduces the carbon footprint of the planet by a pound,” said Pelis.