Our Commitment to Environmental Excellence Recognized

Back in April, I shared our 2026 sustainability goals and the work left ahead to ensure they were met. These goals were built on a simple belief: patient protections and environmental protections go hand-in-hand. 

Over the past several months, teams across Stony Brook University Hospital have made meaningful progress. We've reduced waste, expanded sustainable operating room practices, invested in energy-efficient infrastructure, strengthened environmentally responsible purchasing, and continued building a culture where sustainability is part of how we deliver care every day.
I'm proud to share that this work has now been recognized on a national stage.

Stony Brook University Hospital has been named one of the Top 25 Hospitals in the country for Environmental Excellence by Practice Greenhealth, the highest honor for health care organizations pursuing sustainability. The designation reflects performance across every corner of hospital operations, spanning leadership, waste, chemicals, the operating room, food, purchasing, energy, water, climate initiatives, transportation and green building.

We were also honored with four individual Circle of Excellence awards, recognizing the nation’s top performing hospitals nationally in a given category. SBUH earned this distinction in Waste, Chemicals, Water, and Governance and Leadership, a reflection of just how collaborative this success truly is.

Here are some of the steps we’ve taken to move our sustainability efforts forward:

• Reducing Waste and Greening Clinical Care
  • This year, we focused on lowering hazardous and pharmaceutical waste, reducing single-use items, and advancing more sustainable operating room practices.
  • We also expanded reprocessing of medical devices and supplies, finding new ways to reduce what we send to landfills without ever compromising the care we provide.
• Expanding Sustainable Food and Nutrition
  • Our food and nutrition teams increased support for food-insecure patients, prioritized sustainable sourcing with our Rooftop Farm, and worked to reduce waste across our kitchens and retail operations.
    We also began exploring composting and broader recycling efforts, doing our best to ensure that sustainability touches every aspect of our hospital.
• Investing in Sustainable Operations and Infrastructure
  • We made real investments in energy efficiency, including major infrastructure projects that will reduce our long-term energy use for years to come.
    We also expanded environmentally preferable purchasing and worked to standardize products across our hospitals, helping reduce waste and make more sustainable choices.
• Strengthening Leadership and Accountability
  • We aligned our sustainability goals with our broader strategic priorities, expanded staff education and training, and deepened our participation in national initiatives and climate-focused partnerships.

This recognition reflects how deeply sustainability in health care is fundamentally about how we care for our community. The connection between a healthy environment and healthy patients is direct, making our work feel both practical and necessary.

Emily Bancroft, CEO of Health Care Without Harm and Practice Greenhealth, put it well when this year's honorees were announced: “The health care system of the future – one that heals both the patient and the planet – is being built right here, by institutions like Stony Brook University Hospital.”

I couldn't agree more, and I couldn't be prouder of the teams who made this possible. This honor belongs to every department, every shift and every person who found a way to do their job a little more sustainably this year. 

Thank you for the work you do, every day, on behalf of our patients, our community and our planet.

To learn more about our sustainability program, visit stonybrookmedicine.edu/sustainability.