“The Sustainability Team of Cottonwood seeks to provide support and direction to ensure that the Cottonwood community lives in balance, harmony, and wholeness with the environment while utilizing best practices for economic responsibility.”
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From the Sustainability Mission Statement
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Cottonwood Tucson is committed to bringing healing and wholeness to each individual at our facility. To achieve this goal, we continually seek to improve our treatment by developing new programs and tools which assist our patients in attaining optimal health. The new emphasis on diet/nutrition and physical fitness, utilizing the skills of our nutritionist, personal fitness consultant, and chef is one such example of our dedication to each individual’s total well-being.
While our program focuses on the individual, we believe that assisting patients in their treatment and engaging in environmental stewardship are not mutually exclusive goals. Indeed, becoming environmentally aware and responsible is one vital part of our patients’ recovery and helps them to live on this planet with dignity, integrity, and respect.
Cottonwood has already taken several steps in lessening our impact on the environment. We have:
- Gone completely Styrofoam free.
- Instigated a recycling program as we switch to more recyclable and/or biodegradable materials.
- Developed programs and learning opportunities for both patients and staff.
- Conducted a carpool survey and initiated an incentive program for staff members.
- Adopted a highway.
- Began collecting resources on energy efficiency, water harvesting, and other environmentally relevant topics.
Future plans include exploring the following areas:
- Conduct an energy audit.
- Purchase products – on a facility-wide basis – that have been proven to be more environmentally and economically sound.
- Design and plant an organic garden that would not only grow food but also provide a therapeutic outlet for the patients.
- Develop sustainable landscaping practices, which would include the use of water harvesting.
- Supplement Cottonwood’s electrical, heating, and cooling needs with alternative energy resources.
These goals are certainly ambitious but we are committed to the task. We at Cottonwood ultimately believe we can be, indeed must be responsible not only to the needs of our patients but to the community and world in which we live.
