Long-term care homes and retirement residences in Ontario are getting an environmental performance benchmarking tool specially tailored for seniors’ facilities. Work is now underway on adapting the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care’s established green scorecard for hospitals, which provides health care facilities Canada-wide with a means to assess their own environmental performance and compare themselves to their peers.

Participating facilities managers in the long-term care and retirement home sector will have access to a standardized platform for reporting operational data such as electricity and natural gas consumption, solid waste generation and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. That will come with a real-time reporting dashboard to present a timely and comprehensive picture of where opportunities for energy savings or waste and emissions reductions can be found.

“It will also provide operators with access to an evaluation tool to measure their internal environmental performance, and allow them to see where they stand relative to peer organizations,” explains Neil Ritchie, executive director of the Green Health Care Coalition.

Funding to develop the new green scorecard comes from Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) through its Save on Energy programs, and from Environmental Careers Organization Canada. Operators of seniors’ facilities should be able to begin inputting data for the new scorecard by early 2023.

Its role model, the Green Hospital Scorecard, is now in its ninth year, with crunching of 2020 data now underway. More than 30 health care campuses, predominantly in Ontario, contributed to the 2019 edition.