Our Commitment to Sustainability

Interior Health is committed to being a leader in creating a sustainable and resilient health-care system that equitably contributes to the well-being of our populations, staff, communities and our planet. It is a key element in proactively preparing for and mitigating the health impacts of a changing climate. 

As a health-care organization, we use energy, materials and equipment that produce waste and emissions to deliver health-care services for you. Minimizing our environmental footprint, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and considering how we adapt to climate change is a priority to our teams, patients, communities and many other partners we work with every day. 

Importantly, we are improving our environmental footprint not only to mitigate the effects of climate change, but because we understand the link between climate change and health. A healthy planet supports healthy people. 

Interior Health aligns our strategies and targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), and moving towards a low-carbon economy, with the Government of BC’s CleanBC Climate Action Plan.

The provincial CleanBC Plan sets a path and includes a wide range of actions and targets to reduce GHG for public sector organizations including:

• A building emissions reduction target of 50 per cent by the year 2030, from 2007 levels
• For fleet vehicles, an emissions reduction target of 40 per cent by the year 2030, from 2007 levels

Through the carbon neutral government program, legislated under the Climate Change Accountability Act, Interior Health has achieved carbon neutral operations since 2010.

We report annually on our progress, summarizing our greenhouse gas emissions profile, the total offsets to reach carbon neutrality, our actions taken in the past year, and our plans to continue reducing our environmental footprint. Read more about our plans and progress here:

Climate Change Accountability Report

Strategic Energy Management Plan

Climate Change & Sustainability Roadmap 2023-2028

• Accelerating progress: We’re building sustainability into everything we do—see our new Climate Change and Sustainability Roadmap 2023-2028
• Clinical operations: We are recovering anesthetic gas from our facilities, and reducing the carbon footprint of our clinical services
• Empowering our staff: Through our Sustainability Engagement Program, we’re supporting staff led grass-roots initiatives across our region
• Carbon neutral: Through BC’s Carbon Neutral Government Program, our operations have remained carbon neutral since 2010
• Climate resilience: We’re applying climate resilient building design principles into our new building designs and retrofits
• Material stewardship: 86,500 Kg of plastic was diverted from landfills in 2022 through our biomedical and waste management programs
• Clinical leadership: Dr. Ilona Hale and team develop Planetary Health for Primary Care, a resource for primary care providers on low carbon, high-quality healthcare
• Climate change and health: We’re focusing on our communities, by supporting our partners to develop collaborative, local climate adaptation actions