Getting Started With Recycling In Health Care Organizations
Health care organizations generate high quality waste materials. Let’s give our materials a long and useful life by recycling as much as possible: from metal beverage and supplement containers to pristine surgical supply packaging to the fiberboard boxes that house supplies. While each region has different recycling capabilities and materials standards, the model for successful recycling is universal.
1. Know your footprint
Find out how your organization is tracking waste. How much waste was generated last year? How much of that waste was recycled? Where did the rest of it go? If you are targeting a small-scale recycling initiative, establish a baseline waste estimate. For example, if you want to reduce the waste to landfill in a staff lounge, weigh the full waste bins just before collection. This is your waste baseline.
2. Partner with your recycler
Recycling standards and capabilities vary widely by region, depending on local technology, processors, and markets for recycled materials. Connect with your local recycler, provide samples of materials for recycling, and be prepared to speak to the source, condition, and collection process of targeted materials.
3. Plan for quality and continuity
A recycling program is only successful if materials can be collected in clean, dry condition, free from non-recyclable contaminants. A facility-wide program must be able to maintain quality at scale. When building a new recycling program, start small, and aim for zero errors. Build quality assurance into the program through audits, performance metrics, and feedback. In order to keep items out of the trash bin, we must assign those materials a value. Quality planning establishes and communicates that value.
4. Fold recycling into existing work
Health care has a high regulatory burden around certain types of waste. That means that there is already a focus on precision and quality assurance regarding waste management in your workspace. Fold recycling into existing work. Integrate recycling into established workflows, add recycling audits to daily quality management, and add waste diversion to performance metrics.
Recycling is an important, downstream waste diversion activity, but the ultimate goal is to make less waste in the first place. The value of a recycling program lies in its process and scale. Everyone generates waste, and recycling is one application of a standard waste reduction model. Recycling engages a wide audience around a common practice of waste reduction. This practice is foundational to achieving successful waste reduction throughout an organization, as we teach one another to take better care of our things.
