BOCA RATON — Boca Raton Community Hospital has announced it is focusing on decreasing its carbon footprint and greening the Meadows Road facility by implementing Stericycle’s Integrated Waste Stream Solutions service.
The Hospital’s green initiatives, implemented in May, range from keeping plastic and cardboard out of landfills to increasing its percentage of recycled material. As a result, the Hospital has been able to shut down its onsite incinerator, which was once used for treating all of its waste.
Bob Budnik, executive director of engineering at Boca Raton Community Hospital, said, “Managing costs and maintaining compliance with federal and local regulations and standards is very important. By switching to Stericycle’s Integrated Waste Stream Solutions, we are also significantly decreasing our carbon footprint. We urge every hospital leader to focus on building healthy communities while also reducing the healthcare sector’s national carbon emissions.”
He said the integrated service provided by Stericycle focuses on environmental best practices, training to comply with complex federal and local regulations and standards, and lowering expenses by managing multiple waste streams with one provider, according to hospital officials.
The Stericycle service at BRCH emphasizes proper waste segregation by educating employees on the handling of multiple waste streams such as regulated medical waste and recycling. This training increases the hospital’s overall recycling commitment through a single stream recycling program that includes aluminum, plastic, glass, and paper.
A fall 2009 study by the University of Chicago Hospitals published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that the American healthcare sector accounts for 8 percent of the U.S. carbon footprint. The analysis found that hospitals are by far the largest contributor of carbon emissions in the healthcare sector, and the second most energy intensive industry.
U.S. hospitals generate 6,600 tons of waste each day, the study said. Disposable sharps containers end up in landfills, contributing to the sizable carbon footprint of the healthcare industry. As hospital leaders begin to explore key initiatives such as environmental best practices, they are focusing on reducing waste and implementing sustainable waste management programs to minimize their environmental footprints.
Boca Raton Community Hospital is switching from disposable sharps containers to Stericycle’s Sharps Management Service using Bio Systems reusable containers. Utilizing this proactive service, one Bio Systems reusable container prevents 600 disposable sharps containers from going into a landfill. Sharps containers are a place for items such as used needles, syringes and scalpels.
A 2009 survey by Practice Greenhealth, with more than 700 hospital members, found 64 percent were implementing medical waste reduction programs. Yet few tools exist to specifically help measure a hospital’s environmental impact. The Stericycle Carbon Footprint Estimator tool is designed to help U.S. hospitals determine the amount of plastic, cardboard and resulting CO² emissions diverted from the environment by switching from disposable sharps containers to reusable containers.
By using the Sharps Management System, the 400-bed hospital will eliminate some 44,000 pounds of plastic and 3,400 pounds of cardboard, diverting an estimated 26,000 pounds of CO² annually. This annual carbon diversion is equivalent to not using 1,357 gallons of gasoline.
Since 1986, U.S. hospitals using the Stericycle Sharps Management System and Bio Systems reusable containers have kept more than 82 million disposable containers out of landfills.