Hi all,
Our anaesthetic and intensive care teams are keen to introduce mixed recycling bins for all our packaging waste as there's currently a lot of paper and plastic that needn't be sent to landfill. Estates are keen for this too however Infection Control have said that recycling bins within ICU are an infection risk... (no response for anaesthetic rooms nor theatre yet).
Has anyone had any luck getting mixed recycling in clinical areas? Or have any advice for working with Infection Control?
Thanks!
Hi Becca,
You might want to check with your waste manager on this. For my trust, all our clear bag bins are recycled by an external company Biffa since there is not enough space on site to store all the different recycled materials. We have just done a Recycling QI Project, which mainly is to increase awareness of that fact.
It is usually a misconception that your hospital doesnt recycle.
jason
HI Becca,
Yes this is something that we really did have success with and now we have recycling in all the clinic areas in both ICU and theatre. It definatley was a difficult and long winded process as we had to get the waste contract changed to be able to take away more recycling then we were initally taking. This took a while to achieve. The next issue was who was buying the recycling bins, Im very lucky that I have alot of support for sustainability from the ICU matron therefore she was happy to buy the bins. The next issue is who is going to collect the extra waste, this has now been agreed from the domestic staff but also took a while to confirm.
Keep pushing would be my advice because you can make it happen
Cath Cooper
HI Becca,
We are very lucky and our clear bag waste (what we called household waste) is all processed and recycled by our waste management providers.
Because of this we have intoduced tiger stripe and household waste bins in our anaesthetic rooms.
Inside our theatres all packaging that is created before the patient enters theatres is recycled. once the patient is in then we remove these bags and replace with yellow/orange/tiger stripe.
We are working on Critical Care and havent quite got there yet but there is lots of opportunity as our IPC (who are very sustainably minded) stated, most of the patients are infected, not infectious.
Waste is a full time job!!!!!
Liz
Hi
We carried out a study in a hospital that has quality certificates and introduced recyclable bins in ICU. The result is in this published article. I hope it helps.
https://acta-ape.org/wp-content/uploads/articles_xml/1982-0194-ape-29-0…
Patrícia
Thank you everyone, this is all great to hear! Our estates and waste management team are already very keen for recycling in these areas, it was actually infection control who have said no so it's promising that it's allowed at your trusts! I'm going to meet with infection control to rediscuss it, hopefully we'll be able to come to an agreement.
Becca
Keep going Becca! we are also doing this in our operating theatres but the real challenge is how muach of our packaging cant be recycled by our waste company so domestic waste streams are filling up much more. They key bit is definitely to reduce the pre pateint waste into clinical waste streams as much as possible and to oevrall use less stuff so less waste to work with
You are not alone!
Please log in or sign up to comment.