Every day, nurses work tirelessly to save lives. These compassionate and skilled professionals are often the first point of contact for patients and their families and play a vital role in delivering high-quality care. At PeaceHealth, a not-for-profit and Catholic healthcare system with medical centers in Washington, Oregon, and Alaska, these healthcare heroes go above and beyond their job responsibilities to spearhead opportunities for protecting the earth. As part of PeaceHealth’s dedication to stewardship, the nurses “choose to serve the community and hold [them]selves accountable to exercise ethical and responsible stewardship in the allocation and utilization of human, financial, and environmental resources.” Beginning in February 2021, this resulted in a Cyclyx-led 10to90 pilot program at PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center in Washington, focused on responsibly handling plastic waste, specifically blue wrap.
Over time, this initiative expanded to four additional facilities in Oregon and Washington:
Oregon
Washington
- PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center
- PeaceHealth St. John Medical Center
- PeaceHealth United General Medical Center
Blue wrap is a material made from polypropylene (PP), also known as plastic #5, that ensures the sterility of the surgical instruments utilized. According to the Nightingale Institute, blue wrap accounts for approximately 19% of the waste generated by surgical services! At these PeaceHealth locations, the10to90 program seeks to create an opportunity for recycling blue wrap in operating rooms—as there was previously no means of collecting this material. Blue wrap can also be complicated because it may include tape. Cyclyx’s ability to understand the composition of plastic waste and create a supply chain that did not previously exist—along with the assistance of Owens & Minor for backhauling services—has enabled the collection and diversion of this material away from landfill.
An integral element of this 10to90 program is the training provided by Cyclyx so that staff adheres to best practices for handling and collecting the blue wrap waste. This includes keeping contaminated material out of the collection stream so that Cyclyx can help PeaceHealth increase its facility recycling rate without causing harm to downstream handlers of the waste.
The PeaceHealth nurses have taken ownership of this 10to90 program by collecting and bagging operating room plastic waste materials properly, and then ensuring they are transported to the collection location at each facility. It is clear these motivated nurses are passionate about sustainability and take active steps to reduce landfill-bound waste and protect the environment.
“Blue-wrap was one of the first opportunity areas that our OR teams identified when we started our sustainability program,” says Brian Nelson, Program Director of Environmental Stewardship for PeaceHealth. “Our successful partnership with the 10to90 program has been very motivating for our teams and we continue to build on this success to expand our recycling programs across our system.”
In the past three years, the Cyclyx 10to90 collection programs at PeaceHealth have collected over 68,000 pounds of blue wrap material! To put that in perspective, that is about the weight of three bulldozers’ worth of material1 that will now be diverted from landfill or the environment and redirected towards a recycling pathway.
Dan Constant, Senior Director of Member Engagement & Programs for Cyclyx, said, “Our 10to90 blue wrap collection program allows this commonly used operating room material to enter a pathway for recycling. With our purposefully built reporting feature, we provide transparency to PeaceHealth on the amounts collected and the positive environmental impact. We aim to implement these programs at additional PeaceHealth institutions and expand the types of plastic materials collected. Our collaboration with PeaceHealth demonstrates a desire and a means for hospital-related plastic waste to be handled more sustainably, and we are encouraged and inspired by that.”
Interested medical facilities with blue wrap plastic waste should contact Cyclyx to learn more about sustainable solutions that can be implemented at their institutions. Send all inquiries to info@10to90.com.
1. 4 Things That Weigh About 60000 Pounds (lbs) (weightofstuff.com)