“It can be pretty daunting on where to start as the organisation has numerous sustainability activities running, but no central contact point.”
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Starting the conversation is the first step. Initiate the discussion with your colleagues and supervisors in identifying areas for improvement within your department.
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If there is no existing team or subcommittee, look at establishing one to facilitate sustainability interventions.
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It is a good idea to start with smaller achievable goals to maximise the chance of success. You can build from these, working towards more ambitious interventions and long-term goals.
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This projects would include:
ongoing recycling programs
large interventions that require a change in process
How to start
How teams have started at St Vincent’s
Intensive Care Unit
How we have done it; so far - Karl Askew, Associate Nurse Unit Manager, ICU Nursing
Our big push in the last few months, has been to find people in the department who are interested in getting involved in improving our sustainability within our department.
All that was required was an email outlining a growing interest in working together in a more sustainable way with request for interest in joining a working group. We had a great response with people from all areas of the department keen to bring their ideas and passion for sustainability to the group. Once we had a group brainstorming started to identify what we already do, what we could do fairly easily and what we would love to be able to do with some extra support.
We understand that from previous attempts at improving sustainability we relied too much on a single cohort job classification. So this time around we have a good coverage of the main job description cohorts in our department, being SSA, nursing and medical representation.
We also believe the education is one of our immediate requirements, and have nominated two education leads, with support from the ICU sustainability committee.
The biggest hurdle of introducing is who to access to get things up and running. Below is a list we found helpful:
Co-mingling including soft plastics:
Stella Moon - SVHM Stella.MOON@svha.org.au
PVC recycling: Kerry Anne Todero - Kerry_anne_todero@baxter.com
Recycle used Hover matts: Karl Askew - Karl.askew@svha.org.au
Electrical components: SVHM Environmental Services
Medical equipment: Leigh Baker - Leigh.baker@svha.org.au
We have also done some auditing of our waste to identify areas we need to improve. If anyone needs to discuss a process for this, the ICU sustainability members are happy to assist.
The two main areas for improvement we have identified through a bin contents audit is 25% of waste can be co-mingled,
We need to look at medical procedures to prevent unnecessary opening of products that are not used and go straight into the bin
Medical Imaging
How we have done it; so far - Lana van Raay, Nurse Unit Manager Medical Imaging Department
1. Start a discussion with your team, find out who wants to be a leader and who wants to be an educator, and who wants to be part of the working group
2. Look at the smaller things you can do as a team for your ward/unit and put them in place
a. For medical imaging, it was a case of reviewing what has been done since COVID
i. how can we divide our waste to allow for paper and non paper recycling, and buying the appropriate bins for that
ii. re-evaluation of our clinical waste content and seeing if general waste would be more appropriate
iii. reassessing our sterile procedure packs and modifying the contents to reduce landfill
3. Discuss what you want to do medium term
i. As a team, we wanted to divide our recyclables into paper, hard plastic, soft plastic, PVC
ii. Our trash we wanted into organic waste, metals that could be recycled etc
iii. Move to less single use PPE and into reusable equipment such as tourniquets
4. Discuss what you want to do long term
i. We want to axe the fax, and minimise the paper usage associated with this
ii. Cut down the general waste across MID to as little as possible
