The 2025 Environmental Excellence Awards are Open

The 2025 Environmental Excellence Awards are open, and will be due on Wednesday, April 9. 

If you have questions, need assistance or technical support, or need help setting up or updating an awards account, please contact the Awards team or call our support hotline at 888-378-2259. If you are a VA facility, email vasupport@practicegreenhealth.org or contact our hotline with inquiries. 

Example Success Stories

Success stories are a vital piece of the Environmental Excellence Awards. Not only do narratives that demonstrate concise and complete stories with outcomes contribute to three of the four application scoring frameworks, but stories also give applicants like you an opportunity to highlight achievements and wins on your sustainability journey. 

To help you fill out your application this year, we’re highlighting some great examples from the 2024 Environmental Excellence Awards. 

Find inspiration for your sustainability programs by reading this week’s feature from RUSH University Medical Center:

We've continued to have great success using Rheaply, the asset management platform to enable reuse exchanges on our campus. So much so that Rheaply did a great video and case study (viewable here: https://rheaply.com/resources/case-studies/rush-university/) on our progress and impact last May. In 2023, we continued gaining traction and engagement through the platform as more and more users post, claim, and repurpose everything from furniture to lab equipment to printer cartridges. Here are our annual metrics: 
  • 328 posts created on the platform
  • 218 new platform users (RUSH students, Staff and faculty), which brought our total up over 900 users at RUSH
  • 603 individual surplus, unused items exchanged on the platform
  • 32,529 pounds diverted from landfill
  • $244,722 in avoided costs associated with buying these items new