Emergency Services Protects Employee Well-Being and the Environment for Earth Day!

Earth Week was April 19 – April 23 and Emergency Services Healthy People Heal People (HPHP) well-being program celebrated by purchasing local foods, providing reusable cutlery to generate less waste, and greening their offices all while promoting employee wellness!  All in one week! Read about each initiative below.  

Local Foods 

When patient volumes are critically high, the department provides meals for staff. In honor of Earth Week, they opted to purchase this meal from local restaurants. Local restaurants included Wildflour Café at Towers (Roanoke), The Whole Bean (Franklin), Blue Sky Bakery (Lexington), Papa’s Pizzeria & Subs (Giles), Your Great Escape (Tazewell), and Hethwood Market (CNRV).  

 Purchasing and eating local foods has many benefits including:  

• Tastes better – Non-local food is harvested early, and the ripening process is delayed to allow for transportation and distribution. This food is then artificially ripened once it gets to our grocery stores. Local foods, however, are harvested at their peak, leading to a fresher taste when you purchase them.  This also means they are more nutrient dense!  

• Less emissions – When food must be transported by plane, train, truck, or boat to get to our grocery stores, carbon dioxide emissions are generated. By limiting the distance food travels, we reduce these emissions.  

• Supports the local economy – The money you spend on local food stays in your community and helps enable farmers to keep their farms operating. 

• Saves our green spaces – Supporting a local business helps them keep operating. When farms continue to operate, it helps keep the land green.  

• Builds community – You get the opportunity to know some of your local farmers. 

Reusable Cutlery 

Did you know that nearly 100 million plastic utensils are used by Americans each day and each utensil can take up to 1,000 years to decompose? These are not recyclable, and the decomposition process can leak harmful substances into the earth. Emergency Services has 1,210 employees system-wide. This means if each employee uses just 1 disposable fork per week, we will throw out 62,920 forks per year!  

To help reduce that number, they decided to choose to reuse! HPHP provided all 1,210 Emergency Services employees with a set of reusable cutlery (fork, knife, spoon). This generous gift allows employees to use the same set of cutlery each day for meals rather than a single-use fork, spoon or knife. This small change can make a huge difference in the amount of waste sent to our Virginia landfills!  

Philodendrons  

HPHP also provided leaders in Emergency Services (50 total) a philodendron to place in their office area to green the space. Plants in the workplace provide many benefits including increasing productivity and creativity, cleaning the air, reducing stress, improving your mood, providing a connection to nature, and beautifying the space.  

Employee Well-Being  

Healthy People Heal People encourages us to take care of ourselves and each other so that we may take great care of our patients. Each week, Dr. Lisa Uherick sends out an Emergency Resilience (E.R) email with inspirational quotes and messages, activities, stories, resources, and encouragement. You can view these messages here or email Dr. Uherick to be added to the distribution list.  

When the physical environment around us is thriving and we make healthy choices, we feel better! Thank you to Emergency Services and Healthy People Heal People for your dedication to both our planet and our employees!