Support for The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center faculty and staff now comes with a dose of sustainability.
Amy Hurley, senior employee recognition consultant for Wexner Medical Center, and her team facilitate faculty and staff recognition programs by providing managers with tools and mechanisms to do so. From helping their teams through tough days or projects to recognizing individuals for going above and beyond, Hurley’s team has in recent years delivered pre-packed, single-use cardboard BRAVO boxes to managers upon request.
These boxes typically contain an assortment of fun items, snacks and candy as a means to help teams celebrate or reduce stress levels or to simply help build relationships among colleagues. They provide managers with a simple solution so that they don’t have to come up with ideas from scratch, and managers can keep these on hand to use as situations arise.
As part of Hurley’s team’s efforts to prioritize and contribute toward the medical center’s sustainability efforts, they have worked over the past year to source a more sustainable solution to the cardboard version of these BRAVO boxes. They successfully identified a reusable bag that meets these standards, and they have received approval to include The Ohio State University’s sustainability logo on the inside of the bag.
The team implemented the new BRAVO Emergency Bag initiative in July 2019. In fiscal year 2020, there were zero cardboard boxes used for this program, compared to approximately 1,200 boxes the previous fiscal year. Today, there are over 1,000 reusable bags in circulation.
Additionally, Hurley and her team evaluated the items included in the BRAVO Emergency Bags through a sustainability lens and replaced old items with reusable straws, reusable sandwich bags, coasters manufactured from recycled rubber tires, and collapsible, reusable bowls. In fiscal year 2021, they began incorporating notebooks made from recycled materials and reusable utensils made from bamboo.
“BRAVO Emergency Bags are a useful tool to show our staff that they are appreciated during busy or stressful times,” says Hurley, adding that during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, her team distributed BRAVO bags weekly at the hospitals. “These BRAVO bags are a simple, on-demand solution for managers to recognize their team’s hard work and dedication.”