Ideas That Work: Engage Staff With a Recycling Event

Exactly what can you and your staff recycle? It’s not as straightforward as it might seem. Julie Moyle, RN, MSN, a sustainability strategy manager with Practice Greenhealth, a sustainable healthcare organization in Reston, Va., and a staff nurse at AdventHealth Avista Hospital Ambulatory Surgery Center in Boulder, Colo., says a great way to achieve both buy-in and understanding from your staff about recycling is to hold an event about the practice at your facility.

The star of the show for this event should be a representative of your recycling vendor, who can identify exactly which materials their company can actually recycle. On hand for the event should be your perioperative teams as well as your environmental services staff, says Ms. Moyle.

Just because something is described as or considered in general to be “recyclable” doesn’t mean your recycling vendor wants it. Recycling vendors have an “ick factor” when it comes to the items they will handle from medical facilities, says Ms. Moyle. “The key to success is providing clean, non-contaminated, quality material,” she explains.

An ample supply of that “clean” material can come from items that are opened before the patient even arrives in the OR: the two or three layers of packaging from sterile supplies, paper board, blue wrap, clean plastic tray inserts from custom packs and irrigation bottles, as well as Mylar and soft, flexible plastics, says Ms. Moyle.

“This fun exercise will likely pique the curiosity of staff as they look for opportunities to divert clean trash into a recycling stream,” says Ms. Moyle. “Once you and your team know what can be recycled and what can’t, put them to work on designing a process that works for everybody in terms of getting all of your center’s recyclable materials from point of use to point of collection.” OSM