RECYCLING & SUSTAINABILITY
best practices in collection, transport, and minimising potential for contamination. Stanford Hospital’s comprehensive waste minimisation programme also directly reduced operational expenses, benefiting the organisation’s bottom line. The recycling programme developed in partnership with Greenwaste offered a 75% cost saving per container, compared with municipal waste disposal costs.6 This approach was also adopted, more recently, by the Aarhus University Hospital (AUH) in Denmark. The goal of Central Denmark Region is to recycle 70% of all solid waste produced in the region by 2025. To meet this goal, new knowledge on the lifecycle of material has been necessary. In line with this initiative, AUH has been working on a project to tackle the issue of waste plastic, and has been evaluating its plastic usage.7 AUH found that the hospital generates approximately 3300 metric tons of waste, with the following breakdown: n Waste to energy – 79%. n Recycled – 20%. n Landfill – 1%.
AUH has set an ambitious target to increase recycling and the circular economy of the hospital’s plastic packaging waste, recycling 70% of waste by 2030, with 29% waste to energy and 1% waste to the landfill.
Susanne Backer has led the initiative at AUH to characterise the quantity and quality of healthcare plastics waste generated at the hospital. Based on the same methodology as used by Stanford Hospital and Clinics, a sample of 500 kg of solid waste was analysed. In the sample, 18% was clean, uncontaminated plastic packaging, corresponding to a total of 400 tonnes of clean, uncontaminated sortable plastic packaging per year from AUH. However, the plastic packaging was found to consist of many different types of polymers and combinations of polymers. Moreover, it was not possible for experts to identify the recyclability of approximately 40% of the plastic by visual inspection only.
The most common type of packaging found at the sample test at AUH was peel-packs, making peel-packs an obvious choice for recycling. Peel-packs are particularly found in specialised sterile unpacking rooms, next to the operating theatres, and could easily and safely be sorted and kept free of any form of contamination.
However, the fact that peel-packs do not come in just one type of polymer, but in seven different polymers, which cannot be recycled together, presents a significant barrier. These kinds of challenges could be overcome by
working closely with suppliers. During the project, Susanne Backer arrived at four important preliminary recommendations: n Mark all plastic products that are recyclable.
n Reduce the number of polymers. n Prioritise use of recyclable polymers. n Think about recycling of resources in the design of packaging.
Janine Farmer also believes that more can be done to reduce plastic packaging in hospitals, and points out that standardised surgical packs are creating unnecessary waste, with many unused plastic items being thrown away. “In some instances, just a third of the pack is used – hospitals should be encouraged to do something about this,” she commented.
There is also potential to work with third parties to improve sustainability and provide a source of revenue to charitable projects. In the US, around 760 pounds of blue wrap is collected every week from 13 Kaiser Permanente facilities around the Los Angeles area. The material is picked up by Goodwill of Southern California, and brought to its Los Angeles and San Bernardino facilities for sorting by its workforce. The sorting process includes the removal of paper tape from the polypropylene woven material, which is
FENDO
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0191 417 0170 VISION | INNO AT VATION | SOLUTIONS October 2019 Health Estate Journal 145
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