✨✨General Discussions

Have any of your CCRCs investigated or installed - solar panels, green roofs, or rainwater recovery systems?

I, too, am interested in responses to this question. I am a new resident of a CCRC in Seattle and member of a "green team" of residents who are concerned with issues relating to sustainability. For the moment we're focused on how to dispose of food containers by residents as well as dining services and the health center--what to recycle, what to compost and what goes to landfill. We will soon turn our attention to larger matters such as green roofs, solar panels and rainwater recovery. Ours is an older building that may well be limited in what it can accommodate, and costs for such initiatives could be quite high. Nevertheless, conservation is an essential goal. When our team submits suggestions to our administration (which is generally forward-looking) it will be very helpful to know what other CCRCs have done. I thank interested respondents very much in advance for your thoughts.

Rob Bowman

Seattle

Our Green Team is considering projects for 2025, one of which is to get our residence to switch from plastic takeout containers to reusable ones. We'll need to address the issue of cost, of course: difference in price between plastic containers and reusable ones; additional staff time and energy for washing the containers. I'd like to know from my fellow members if your own CCRCs have made such a switch (or tried) and what the outcomes were.

I'm also aware that at least one CCRC has hired a VP for Sustainability. Unfortunately I don't know the name, but would love to know if any of you resided at a CCRC that has done so. I thank you very much in advance for your time and thoughts.

Rob Bowman

Seattle

Our Green Team has been working on this for several years with limited success. Dining services cannot reuse containers for several reasons, manpower, cost and infectious disease. Governmental regulations abound and are strictly enforced. Many facilities have dealt with infectious disease outbreaks in specific units or campus wide, Covid II for example. Dealing with an outbreak can top one million dollars and take month or longer.

What we did was focus on educating our residents in two areas:

1) Bring your own containers to dining room. (works sporadically)

2) Educating residents on what is recyclable and what is not. (better success)

That said, our recyclers change their criteria often, so this gets confusing for everyone and time consuming.

The all glass recycler loves the quality of glass we provide. And we have just reinstated a battery pick up service.

I'll see what else I can find out.

Maura Conry

Board Member

Forum Coordinator

Check out this site

https://www.redish.com/

At Westminster Canterbury of the Blue Ridge residents can pay a $10 fee for a green box for take out. Each mealtime, the personally washed box is turned in for a ticket which gets the selected food in an institutionally washed box. The resident washes it at home and the cycle is begun again. This has been sustained for at least 3 years and really cuts down on plastic that may or may not be recyclable.

Bylaws for the active Green Team initiative from a CCRC in Kansas!

This may help save some of you a lot of time, as having a framework from which to work helps.

Thanks Maura, Leslie and Daniel for your very helpful replies. Clearly there's a real variety of practices concerning reusable containers. We certainly have our work cut out here!

Rob Bowman

Seattle

It has been over a year now that I first posted an inquiry about the use of reusable meal takeout containers. After a convincing commitment to adopting this practice our management put the issue on hold. The reason, we have been told, is a dearth of other local CCRCs using them without encountering some practical issues: software problems, resident apathy, expense and perhaps others. Our green team is looking for an update of current practices. We would br very grateful to hear from those CCRCs where reusable containers are still being used, have discontinued the practice, or are on the fence, and reasons for each. Having watched the recent NACCRA Media webinar on sustainability, I'm encouraged by the initiative taken by residents elsewhere. Ours is a comparatively small and old (60 years) CCRC with very limited real estate in the middle of a city. But we're committed to reducing our imprint.

Happy Earth Day to all! And thanks very much for your thoughts.

Rob Bowman

Seattle

We encourage residents to buy reusable food containers by stocking them in the convenience store on site that is run by residents. We too tried to interest food service in a program of using reusable food containers but were not successful. We were successful, however, in getting rid of the hated, horrible plastic disposables which are terrible to use for heating up food. We count that as a very significant achievement. I don't know the cost or the source of the current paper-ish containers, but we're happy with them.

Our CCRC provides the green eco containers at no extra cost. Residents can request them for any to-go meal. We wash them out return them and they are sanitized before being offered again. The other option is a disposable/recyclable container. Residents have welcomed the Eco containers- they are quite popular.

Cathy and Elizabeth, do you happen to know what kind (if any) software tracks the movement of the takeout containers in your CCRCs from kitchen to resident and back? The proprietary name(s) of the software, whether it tracks barcode or RFID, and whether it's integrated with table side meal ordering and/or delivery? Thanks.

Rob Bowman

Seattle

Our green containers are not assigned to individuals. We think of them as similar to the plates used in our dining room. When a resident who has opted to use them wants a take away meal, he or she must return a previously used one to be sanitized. His or her new order is placed in a freshly sanitized one. Those not participating in the program are charged $1 for a recyclable container.

About a year ago, our culinary department in conjunction with our green team began offering green plastic take away boxes. Residents are charged a onetime fee of $14 to participate. When a used box is returned, a box that has been sanitized in our commercial dishwasher is used for the new order. Otherwise, the resident is charged $1 for a recyclable container. The program seems to be working quite well as evidenced by the recycling bins in our trash rooms.

Ongoing initiatives and actions from our Green Team in Kansas.

1. Bylaws completed.
2. BYOC (bring your own container).
3. BYOM (bring your own coffee mug).
4. Recycling Education campus wide. Do's and Don'ts.
5. Recycling initiatives tailored to needs of high rises, cottages, villas and common areas.
6. Dumster Divers (residents who monitor recycling bins and use their observations for further education.
7. Articles for campus publications (one attached on history of the green team).
8. Composting (individual and food service departments)
9. Maintaining campus to encourage pollinators (pollinator gardens, careful Fall trimming)
10. Batteries, plastic, glass, food, paper.....(and the beat goes on)

Maura Conry

Board Member

Forum Coordinator

Pennswood Village installed a stormwater capture system years ago. Here is the story: https://tospv.org/pennswoods-beautiful-meadow/ .

We have residents who volunteer to recycle aluminum, and discarded electronic devices. However as market values for recycled paper are low; we think our waste hauler burns it. We have a local company that collects and composts food waste for a fee, and returns the composted material for use on garden plots.

Thanks for your reply, Richmond. Pennswood Village appears to enjoy quite an expansive setting. I'll share its story with our green team.

Regards,

Rob Bowman

Seattle

Richmond,

There are people at Medford Leas that are interested in making compost for gardens. Please email me with the name of the company Pennswood uses. My email address is robertskay@yahoo.com. Thanks.

The company that does the Compost is https://www.konacompost.com/, Heather Guidice. Check out the website. You can email her at info@konacompost.com. They are based in Yardley, PA.

We recently had a monster generator and a large solar field installed. The generator supplies the entire building in the event of a power outage. We are told that we are the only CCRC in NJ that has one. I believe the solar field generates more than enough power for our needs….on a cloudless day!