[OKC] From Slate's Green Lantern: Wasting Syndrome

[Miles, Karen]

Wasting Syndrome


How much trash do hospitals produce?

By Nina Shen Rastogi
  <http://www.slate.com/id/2271640/> 
What happens to all that hospital waste?  Recently, my young son was
hospitalized for several days, and I couldn't help but notice the
massive amount of goods that were thrown away during the course of his
care-disposable smocks, one-use saline syringes, etc. The trash can in
our room was emptied three or four times daily! Just how much trash do
hospitals produce?
Firm, up-to-date numbers on hospital waste are hard to come by, but the
short answer seems to be: A lot. One widely cited statistic holds that
the nation's hospitals generate 6,600 tons of waste daily, but that
figure comes from a survey
<http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/262/12/1635>  that's more
than 20 years old. Two million tons a year (or about 5,500 tons a day)
is another estimate that pops up frequently. But that number dates back
to at least the late 1990s, and the Lantern couldn't track down its
original source.
To ballpark a more recent figure, the Lantern turned to Practice
Greenhealth <http://www.practicegreenhealth.org/> , a network for
eco-friendly health care institutions. In a 2010 survey, 114 of the
group's member hospitals reported generating an average of 33.8 pounds
of waste per day, per staffed bed
<http://www.ahrq.gov/research/havbed/definitions.htm> . According to the
American Hospital Association, there are 951,045 staffed hospital beds
<http://www.aha.org/aha/resource-center/Statistics-and-Studies/fast-fact
s.html>  in the country. That works out to about 5.9 million tons of
garbage annually-perhaps even more, considering that the hospitals
surveyed already recycle or otherwise divert at least 10 percent of
their waste. (By comparison, Americans produced 250 million tons of
municipal solid waste
<http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/msw99.htm> -what we
typically call "garbage"-in 2008.) 
The discrepancy between this estimate and the older figures may reflect
an actual increase in waste generation, says Cecilia DeLoach Lynn,
director of sustainability education at Practice Greenhealth. But the
difference could also be due to the fact that hospitals have begun to
track their waste more closely in recent years.
Since the late 1990s, when the EPA and the American Hospital Association
set a series of pollution prevention goals
<http://www.h2e-online.org/docs/h2emou101501.pdf>  (PDF) for the
industry, hospitals have taken a variety of measures to send less trash
to the landfill. Basic recycling efforts are an obvious but potentially
significant way to reduce waste without affecting the quality of patient
care. Paper and cardboard might account for a full half of a hospital's
solid waste, according to one older estimate
<http://www.hercenter.org/wastereduction/solidwaste.cfm> .
Other hospitals are experimenting with reprocessing and reusing
disposable devices
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/health/06waste.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&ref
=health&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1285704231-5OFt0x3WTRykm9iifxM1fw>  and
composting their food waste <http://www.slate.com/id/2256339/> .
Operating rooms have become a special focus of waste minimization
efforts
<http://www.practicegreenhealth.org/educate/greening/greening-the-or/> :
Anecdotal reports from the 1990s suggest that 20 to 30 percent
<http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/710513>  of a hospital's waste
comes from ORs, despite the fact that they take up a relatively tiny
amount of floor space. 
Hospitals don't just produce a lot of garbage; they produce
fantastically complicated garbage. Besides all the paper, linens, and
food waste they generate, they also churn out unused and expired pills
<http://www.slate.com/id/2236431/> , infectious waste
<http://cms.h2e-online.org/ee/rmw/>  (such as blood-soaked bandages and
tissues from surgery), hazardous lab chemicals, electronics
<http://www.slate.com/id/2239756/> , and a host of other materials that
need to be carefully separated and treated in order to minimize their
impact on the planet. 
Article continues at: http://www.slate.com/id/2270859/pagenum/all/
 
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