WASTE NOT, WANT NOT With a little planning, you can save unused surgical towels for reuse.

RESOURCE REUSE
Saving Unused Blue Towels is a Green Option

Those blue surgical towels the surgeon uses to dry his hands after scrubbing come in sterile packs of 5, but for a lot of cases only 1 gets used. After the case begins, they're considered contaminated and must be discarded once it's over. Which is a shame, because they look like good quality cloth towels. So we decided not to let them go to waste. When we know we won't be using all of them, we take the remainder out of the package before the patient enters the OR and save them in sub-sterile. They work really well for terminal cleaning a room, especially stretcher underbodies, table legs and wheelchairs, a job that we'd otherwise have to purchase cleaning supplies for.

Ruby B. Aiken, RN, BSN
Colleton Ambulatory Surgery Center
Walterboro, S.C.
[email protected]