medical waste management
Lehigh Valley Health Network Establishes Model Program for Waste Management and Recycling Continued from page 3 says he has restaurants that are able to save $10,000 per year per facility. Once again, Zengen takes the effort a step further and is buying produce from the farm that takes the hospital’s food waste for composting. The organic fruits and vegetables are used in food preparation and in a farmers market on site. She is looking at food that comes back from patient rooms and even the cafeterias. Cougles confides that her ultimate goal is zero landfill for wastes generated by LVHN. Zengen doesn’t understate the importance of training and education. LVHN has a virtual learning center, she notes. Every year, the
clinical side of the staff receives training. It’s getting more intense, she says, because it covers pharmaceutical waste as well as proper disposal of hazardous waste and infectious waste. The non-clinical side gets less intense training in those subjects, but both sides get training in the recycling program. LVHN also has “green teams” that include management representation. The teams meet regularly and the area teams have leaders and co-leaders who come to the meetings and report progress. The green teams also look at opportunities to remove wastes and recycle. One such opportunity on the non-clinical side is the plastic lids that cover the food in the
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Medical Waste Management JAN - MAR 2012
cafeteria, says Zengen. Because there is no number stamped on them, they thought the lids weren’t recyclable. On the clinical side, the green teams look for non-infectious wastes to remove from the infectious waste stream. Just as in Blanchard’s example, they have identified items like paper towels and gloves. Though she’s a department of one, Zengen has support from some recycling team members. In one facility, it is full time because of the size of that facility. In another, it is a part-time position. Much of the support comes from vendors. Starting a program means doing a lot of homework, says Zengen. She put out requests for proposal (RFPs) and met with vendors. She visited their facilities to ensure they had the means to keep the various recyclable wastes secure and that they could handle the comingled and paper. As a result, she says, there’s a personalization, a relationship, between the hospital and Cougles. As issues come up or new facilities are added, they are able to respond. Cougles says that meetings with LVHN are mostly about what they are going to do next. For example, Cougles says they are always looking for opportunities to position a larger container and make few pick-ups in an effort to keep everyone’s costs down and improve the margin on recycling. Blanchard and Cougles point out that there are costs associated with every container (rental) and every pick-up. Cougles points out that most waste haulers don’t itemize their costs for the customer. Zengen adds that she has been able to reduce the number of pick ups in many instances by simply positioning larger containers where they are needed. Removing waste from the municipal waste stream bound for the land fill reduces demand for those services and, Cougles notes, one customer who has added a food waste program automatically reduces waste pick up by one container each time it adds a facility to the food recycling program. Another target for Zengen and LVHN is pharmaceutical waste. “We have a great program,” she says, “but it’s costly.” LVHN is paying a vendor to sort the waste. She’s looking at a process that would segregate at the point of generation (the pharmacy) and use a sticker to identify the pharmaceutical wastes separately from the unregulated wastes, similar to the efforts to remove non-infectious wastes from medical wastes. Zengen stresses the amount of “due diligence” that goes into the recycling programs. Every program is researched from every angle, she explains, from the financial to protocol to environmental. For her purposes, environmental is not only the environmental impact but also the environment in which the program must operate. That brings the discussion full circle to getting buy-in and providing good training and education to ensure compliance.