Climate Change and Environment
Climate change action starts in our workplaces
Two Sydney nurses are leading recycling initiatives in their hospitals, collecting waste materials such as surgical wraps, IV bags and oxygen masks so they can be repurposed into garden hoses, safety mats and plastic parts for toys.
Sustainability begins with waste reduction
Veronica Mills, a gynaeoncology clinical nurse specialist at the Chris O’Brien Lifehouse in Camperdown, started a program to reduce and recycle hospital waste after seeing the “vast amount of single-use items being used on a day-to-day basis” in theatres.
In a presentation at the NSWNMA Health Environment Forum, Veronica explained that she has now implemented a bin system to recycle Kimguard surgical wrap and plastic hollow-ware containers.
“We’ve also begun to re-use our sterile pack plastic coverings from surgical packs to bag patient belongings in our day surgery unit,” she said.
Veronica said she was inspired to establish an Environmental Sustainability Committee at the Chris O’Brien Lifehouse after attending an earlier health forum at the Association in 2017.
“I gathered up a group of about 15 colleagues, and we created a strategy document including a value statement and a brief outline of the short-, mid- and long-term goals.”
After researching sustainability projects at other hospitals “it was clear that we needed to start small and only focus on a couple of target areas,” she said.
“We chose waste as a starting point as this seemed the most tangible area of sustainability that most members of the committee were keen to address.”
Involving staff at all levels of seniority and across departments is a key factor in the program’s success, Veronica said. She has managed to “get a representative from each area of theatres, including our day surgery unit, anaesthetics and recovery department, scrub/scout, our sterilising department as well as an anaesthetist and some surgeons.”
“Having interest from all areas of the department is really important if you want to see ongoing commitment and support through the introduction and trialling of improvement practices.”
One of the challenges Veronica has faced is finding out exactly what happens to recycled items – there is no formal tracking system, for example. Through her own investigations, Veronica has found that hospital waste is turned into palletised plastic, which is then supplied to plastic manufacturers for products such as electronic plastic casing, toy parts and plastic household furniture and appliances.
Another challenge has been gathering “meaningful, quantifiable data that you can take to upper management that’s going to reflect a cost saving and environmentally beneficial waste management plan”.
Save the environment, save money
Recycling PVC items such as IV bags, oxygen tubing and oxygen masks not only saves the environment, it is saving Canterbury Hospital money, according to Chelsea McGuinn, a nurse in the hospital’s emergency department.
Chelsea recently introduced a recycling program at the hospital to repurpose PVC items into other usable items such as garden hoses and safety mats. She says PVC recycling costs are “roughly $10 for a 240-litre bin, [which is] miniscule compared to how much general waste costs”.
Recycling is also an incredibly effective use of resources, she added. “It takes roughly a quarter of the energy to repurpose an item from already used PVC than to make new materials from scratch.”
Chelsea faced early challenges in setting up recycling systems in her hospital, she told the NSWNMA Environmental Health Forum.
“It was a really long back and forth for about four months between management and Baxter (the waste consultant) just to organise the bins. The cleaning staff were a bit perplexed to see new bins around the department. A few of them tried to clean them, but word soon spread to leave them as they are to be recycled separately.”
Like Veronica she also found gaining the support of all levels of her department, both “managers and colleagues”, was critical to success.
“I’ve now got a little squad of ‘greenies’ in my department who are also very conscious of the environment and very supportive of the change.”
Because there is a constant rotation of staff, doctors and nurses in ED, “education is always ongoing”, she says.
Chelsea has installed extra signage so that staff use the correct bins, and she has sent out reminder emails to her ward about “what to do and not to do, and tips and tricks about making recycling easier”.
“Cross-contamination was and still is a major issue,” she says. Chelsea still needs to “bin dive” to separate IV sets from “Maccas bags”.
Overall though, she says the initiative has had a “great response,” which makes it easier to roll out the trial in the ED ward “across the hospital”.
Since introducing her recycling program, Chelsea has seen staff becoming more environmentally conscious in other areas, with more staff “bringing reusable water bottles and keep cups”.
The department is also switching from plastic single-use cutlery to metal or wooden options, and other areas in the hospital are “brainstorming ideas”.
For more information
See how other hospitals have introduced successful environmental programs.
https://www.greenhospitals.net/