Columbus Sustainability Guide: How Two Local Hospital Systems Are Going Green

Hospitals are large waste generators of single use plastics and papers, and it can be hard to try to reduce the use of them for sanitary and safety reasons, but a few local hospitals are trying. Approaching sustainability initially in LED light bulb switch overs and composing left over food, but now in paper gowns to cloth and creative uses for polypropylene surgical wrap.

For the past four years, Koch has been charged with reducing the environmental impact of the hospital system, an effort being pursued at hospitals across the nation and encouraged by the federal government and numerous health care organizations. With an estimated average of 29 pounds of waste produced every day for each hospital patient in the country, the task is monumental and mind-bending. “How do we do this in a safe way without impacting patients?” Koch asks herself (Gray, 2024). 

OhioHealth also is moving to a zero-waste food system by composting, using digesters and donating unneeded food to pantries or to farmers for animal feed. And it has signed on to the White House Climate Pledge, the only hospital system in Ohio to do so. That means it promises, among other things, to reduce organizational emissions by 50 percent by 2030 and achieve net zero by 2050 (Gray, 2024).

Both the OSU and OhioHealth hospitals have come up with unique ways to recycle blue surgical wrap, made of polypropylene (the plastic marked with a five) and used to keep instruments sterile as they’re moved from place to place. The wrap makes up an estimated 19 percent of operating room waste, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (Gray, 2024). 

The OSU med center sends its wrap to a manufacturer that recycles it into bedpans. OhioHealth found a local company that could recycle its wrap into tote bags (Gray, 2024).  

Scannell says an employee noticed how much blue wrap was being thrown away and suggested it be recycled. As a demonstration, employees built a huge plexiglass cube at the front of Marion General Hospital to collect the discarded polypropylene. “We thought it would take forever to fill up, but it only took a week,” Scannell says (Gray, 2024). 

It is equally interesting and shocking to see the problem pile up, but then positively turn into an opportunity. Having an employer care about the physical environment but also the cultural environment creates that sense of community in the workplace.

“People feel good about putting less waste in the landfill,” she says. “It really helps with our culture. A hospital is an anchor institution in a community, and we need to be good stewards of how we use our resources so we can be an example for our employees and our community.” (Gray, 2024).

Addressing the non hazardous medical waste issue is an interesting design area when thinking about circularity. OhioHealth and OSU have started in initial measures, but I wonder to what scale their efforts could be adopted nationwide? As well as the facilities that would be needed to accommodate that volume of material from multiple hospitals that are constantly producing? Producing tote bags for patients to put their belongings in while staying, and bed pans out of the surgical wraps are a start, but there seems like more in a patients stay that could be created out of the recycled material to turn back to a resource for the hospital.

Reference.

Gray, K. L. (2024, January 17). Columbus Sustainability Guide: How Two Local Hospital Systems are going green. Columbus Monthly. https://www.columbusmonthly.com/story/lifestyle/features/2024/01/17/columbus-sustainability-guide-ohiohealth-ohio-state-university-hospitals-go-green/72249287007/