By: Darrel Hicks
Have you ever wondered what happens to items like used facemasks, gowns, or even those “recyclable” privacy curtains? You may assume they go “away,” but did you know there is no “away” when it comes to these Single Use Disposables (SUDs)?
I worked in the hospital Environmental Services/Housekeeping department for over 34 years, and I’ve seen where those items go, they go “AWAY” into our landfills!
The Growing Problem of Single-use Personal Protection Equipment (PPE)
Healthcare workers on the front-line emphasize that there is an important role and need for PPE’s, primarily to prevent infectious diseases from taking hold and spreading, and COVID-19 was a perfect example of this need.
The global pandemic and the high demand for facemasks and gowns has created an environmental disaster. The scale of waste from this is now slowly being tallied as masks, gowns, and face shields fill bodies of water along with our landfills.
A March 2021 study by the University of Southern Denmark estimated that 129 billion face masks have been used during global COVID. This equates to an astonishing 3,000,000 masks used per minute, according to the study.
With medical waste currently more visible than ever, researchers are calling for healthcare’s waste and environmental footprint to be brought under control: “Corona virus may well become the catalyst, because people may realize that by degrading our environment, we could find we are getting more of these types of disease,” says Sonia Roshnik, Executive Director, Geneva Sustainability Centre.
Eighty five percent of all medical waste is disposed in the same way we dispose of waste generated at home, or at work. If a hospital or healthcare system has set a goal to become carbon neutral, then repurposing and re-using these SUDs should be of greatest concern and priority.
So why aren’t patient care items such as recyclable privacy curtains being recycled?
One of the chief problems with hospital curtains is their tendency to spread disease. Studies have found methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and other well-known pathogens harbored on privacy curtains. Disease-causing organisms cling to the curtain and can easily transfer to the hands or gloves of healthcare workers.
Many hospitals operated at or near capacity during the pandemic and followed WHO or CDC guidance for terminal cleaning of patient rooms because COVID is an airborne virus that can also spread via droplets of sputum. If there was a privacy curtain at the infected patient’s bedside, it had to be exchanged for a clean one after the room was terminally cleaned and before the next patient admission.
During this period of unprecedented curtain exchanges, many hospitals realized that launderable curtains were a BIG problem for the Environmental Services department. Additionally, changing a curtain involved “a dedicated staff member, a ladder, and a trip to the clean curtain inventory lockup, an exchange process taking about 60 minutes.”
In response many hospitals chose to switch from cloth to polypropylene privacy curtains: Curtains that could be exchanged in minutes and touted as RECYCLABLE. Hospitals that did so declared, “Hooray! We can be environmentally responsible, realize substantial savings, while also reducing labor and getting rid of our ugly, stained, and wrinkled textile curtains.”
Unfortunately, the reality is that virtually NO hospitals in America can recycle these curtains. Companies provide SUD recycling often do not take hospital curtains that MIGHT be contaminated with COVID or other pathogens. So, in the end, the reality of recycling was not viable for the new-found “recyclable” curtain solution.
What is Blue Wrap?
Blue wrap, just like the curtain, is also made from non-woven polypropylene (a #5 recyclable). It’s one of the cleanest purest patient care items, but virtually NO HOSPITAL is recycling their #5 blue wrap, resulting in millions of pounds of blue wrap going into our landfills every day.
In 2021 The Ohio State Wexner Medical Center wanted to reduce the environmental impact of SUDs, and in just two months the hospital avoided 7,000 pounds going into the landfill by collecting blue sterilization wrap at just two surgical sites.
How can hospitals recycle facemasks, gowns, privacy curtains, and other blue wrap materials such as CSR wraps?
A WIN for a healthcare organization is any time they can reduce waste, cost, and lower their carbon footprint while not compromising patient and staff safety. While recycling items such as face masks, gowns, and privacy curtains has been incredibly challenging for healthcare systems, Thermal Compaction Group (TCG) now offers an easy-to-use Thermal Technology that melts AND sterilizes all of these SUDs along with a 50% reduction in carbon emissions!
The TCG equipment can be installed on or near site and it takes just 75 minutes per cycle to melt (at 662F) and compress SUDs into sterilized bricks that can then be sold for remanufacturing. This process will keep SUDs out of the landfill and reduces the volume by 85%, while creating a circular economy process that closes the recycling loop yielding a negative carbon footprint; not just zero.
Here’s the Bottom Line:
Switching to our recyclable privacy curtains at your facility can realize cost and labor savings from 75-90%, and these savings will rapidly off-set the cost of TCG’s CurtainMelt technology. Naturally the equipment can be used to recover and reuse not just curtains, but also will process masks, gowns, and all other recyclable SUDs that are being used to help keep patients, staff, and visitors safe!
