NYP-WCM Environmental Sustainability Committee

The new NYP-WCM Environmental Sustainability Committee began in May 2025, as an expansion of the PeriOp Sustainability Group to address environmental issues that clinicians and staff in clinical spaces encounter daily. The PeriOp Sustainability Group was founded in 2022 as a partnership between the Columbia and Cornell Anesthesiology departments to focus on sustainability projects in operating rooms. Although the group’s initial goal was to decommission the N2O lines in anesthesia rooms, the scope of the work has expanded over the years beyond anesthesiology to reduce waste and energy not only in operating rooms. For this reason, the new, more comprehensive committee was created. The NYP-WCM Environmental Sustainability Committee will be a centralized source of sustainability solutions for the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/ Weill Cornell Division. A counterpart committee also exists at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia. 

Clinical and non-clinical team members from a broad range of departments, led by Deirdre C. Kelleher, MD, Associate Professor of Anesthesiology at Weill Cornell Medicine, and Sushrut Arora, Project Manager, Hospital Operations Project Management Office of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, can participate in the committee and share expertise in helping identify, evaluate, and lead the implementation of a range of sustainable solutions.

The committee meets monthly, and new team members are always welcome.  

For more information, contact the Office of Energy & Sustainability at WCM-Sustainability@med.cornell.edu or Dr. Kelleher at dck7002@med.cornell.edu.