OPINION
During a recent hospital stay, a lovely nurse used a pair of scissors to cut a (clean) bandage before she used it on me. She also took a few steri-strips from a packet to close one of my wounds. “Would you like to take these home?” I hadn’t been instructed to re-dress my wound but she explained that if I didn’t say yes, the metal scissors and pack of remaining steri-strips would end up in the bin. I gladly accepted her offer and have added them to my first aid kit. This is not the first time I have heard of a patient being offered a strange kind of ‘party favour’ to take home. Waste-conscious hospital staff do this to save the items from going in the bin.
I cannot speak for all hospitals, but the vast majority have a long way to go when it comes to sustainable practices. Waste is not commonly separated or recycled in hospitals. If it is, often sharp items and hazardous waste are placed in separate bins and everything else (e.g. drapes, dishes, flush bags, tubing, sponges) goes into landfill or is incinerated. “We are supposed to recycle the PVC fluid bags by cutting off the tubing and emptying the fluid and then putting the bag in a special bin for recycling - no one does it.” In places where sorting systems are present, they’re not used correctly which results in contamination of the items that could have been recycled or reused.
Of course, health and hygiene come first in a hospital context, but international hospitals and companies like Medsalv are proving that it’s absolutely possible to eliminate environmental waste while improving hygiene standards and saving money. Perhaps one day Aotearoa, New Zealand will be filled with tools like ‘pharmacy robots’ that remove the need for plastic pill bottles. This technology is essentially a giant vending machine that dispenses pills to the right patients on a just-in-time basis while decreasing the risk of medications going to the wrong people.
