The first story is found here:
http://earth911.com/blog/2009/01/23/dell-childrens-first-leed-hospital-in-world/
The gist of it is that a children's hospital in Texas received a LEED platinum designation - the world's first for a hospital. They will be implementing such things as reusing 47,000 tonnes of material originally used on airport runways, using water-conserving utilities, xeriscaping, using 40% fly ash in the concrete instead of Portland cement, and installing locally made / eco-friendly / low VOC products throughout.
While interesting in itself, I think this relates strongly to the larger issue of "hospital health" (which can be tied in closely to community health). I remember reading an article in the Macleans magazine a year or two ago that discussed how the design of a hospital (in every sense of the word) actually has a very significant impact on things like how fast patients recover or whether they get sicker by contracting other disease or infections. The article claimed that the classically designed hospital, with the long hallways, multiple patients per room, etc. had shown to be a bad design for keeping people healthy in hospitals and that architects and designers were now looking to totally redesign new and old hospitals with this in mind. So with that in mind, I think its great that new hospitals also include sustainability measures, as I have no doubt that the cleaner, greener environment would help both the physical and mental recovery of the patients ('mental' meaning - you'd probably feel better psychologically if you were in a beautiful room with fresh air flow and feel-good green products everywhere than you would stuck in a 4-bed per room, industrial feeling, sickly room). As the president and CEO of the children's hospital says, "Our motivation to pursue LEED Platinum was not just environmental. Being a ‘green’ hospital has a profound, measurable effect on healing. What’s good for the environment and good for our Mueller neighbors is also good for our patients."
The health of the hospital, of course, directly impacts the health of one's community as well. If people end up stuck in a hospital for longer than anticipated due to illness from the hospital itself, this not only has an economic cost (of the hospital needing to continue to support the patient, and of the patient not working), but also a strong social cost (stories are spread about the hospital and it comes to be seen as a place to be avoided, an illness in itself) (also, more directly, it translates into time spent away from friends and family and what would likely be an increase in the patient's risk of depression or other psychological ailments). So the moral of the story is: everything is interconnected and a healthy and sustainable hospital contributes to a healthy and sustainable community!
The second story is found here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/jan/26/hospitals-nhs-meat-carbon
This article takes the issue of hospital sustainability beyond that of simply patient health and focuses on the emissions that hospitals produce. Since health care is something we classify as an 'essential service', we tend to not talk much about its environmental impact, but this article highlights an interesting study done by the National Health Service (in the UK) that looked at health care's environmental impacts and is proposing actions to help mitigate them. The article mentions that a recent study published by the NHS showed that the sum total of CO2 emissions for all of its outposts in the UK produced more than 3% of the country's total, meaning that, if it were itself a country, it would be the 81st biggest polluter in the world! Fascinating stuff, which is why the NHS began proposing a wide range of solutions to lower its impacts, which include a whole slew of things, in the hopes that it can cut its emissions by 80% by 2050.
One of the highlights of the plan, and the title of the article, was that the NHS would encourage hospitals to take meat off their menus or to offer fewer meat and dairy products in general. This of course, makes me very excited, as I recently became a vegetarian and speak highly of it as a way of life. Animal welfare and ethics aside, most people don't realize the huge environmental impacts of the meat industry. I had the unfortunate chance to talk about this with an average North American hick, whose response was, "What, cow farts? Hahaha" (he said a bunch of other stupid sh*t too, but I won't pain your eyes with it). Yes, cow farts, but also huge issues with land degradation and advancement of farmland onto natural areas, highly polluted runoff from the combination of animal waste and fertilizers, the energy costs of producing animal feed, and emissions from the transportation of animals and meat products to and from the processing facility.
See this article for the impacts of meat on a purely CO2-based level: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-greenhouse-hamburger
More and more scientists are coming out in favour of a vegetarian diet as the best way that an average person can make a difference both on their CO2 emissions and also on their health. Nobel Peace Prize winner R.K Pachauri, head of the IPCC, and one of my role models, is a strict vegetarian and recently began advocating it on the global stage.
While I could go on (and I most certainly will in the future), I will simply sum up by saying that, yes, meat is delicious, but we are (both fortunately and unfortunately) the transition generation - the one that has to change and break with old ways or else risk extinction from global ecological collapse. Perhaps in the future, when everything gets sorted out, we will be able to raise animals for meat in a sustainable way, but for now, we must do all we can to reduce our emissions, and refraining from meat (and not driving, obviously) is a great start to this, so I am pleased and heartened by the NHS's move towards this. Hopefully other meal-providing services, like the airline industry, will move towards this as well!
More resources for all of you who are considering the switch (don't worry, none of these links contain pictures of animals being killed or any of that stuff):
http://www.alternet.org/story/12162/?page=entire
http://www.vegpledge.com/
http://www.hippy.com/article-22.html
http://www.vegcooking.com/
http://www.petaliterature.com/VEG297.pdf
I know myself that, while I endorsed vegetarianism for awhile, I was always held back by the question of "what do I cook?". While there will no doubt be a rocky transition period, its actually very easy to find and cook good vegetarian meals. Buy a couple cookbooks that catch your eye (Chapters has a good vegetarian section, or use Amazon), or just hit up Google! I'm always happy to provide help / moral support as well! :)
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