Hospital waste can feed into a community’s recycling service and strengthen the efforts at regional and national levels. In many places, the push for recycling is more rigorous than ever before.

“Those who are not recycling are really behind mainstream practices. Over the past 15 years, education in our schools and communities has taught us that recycling is part of the fabric of America,” said Linda Lindquist, RN, BSN, a graduate research assistant in the Environmental Health Education Center at the University of Maryland School of Nursing in Baltimore.

Registered nurses often express a passion for recycling. They find creative ways to channel their commitment into action and are forming or joining hospital-based green teams. Those efforts will benefit hospitals, charities and the environment—in one fell swoop.

“We hold an annual cell phone recycling drive for SafeHouse Denver, a local shelter for women and children who have escaped an abusive relationship,” said Mary Kershner, RN-BC, BSN, of Kaiser Permanente Colorado's Institute for Health Research. Some phones are reprogrammed for 911 use at the shelter. Others are returned to cell phone companies for monetary credit.

Kershner, a research nurse, joined the institute’s Eco Team shortly after its formation in 1990, pursuing her long-standing interest in reducing waste and minimizing its impact on the environment. A former Girl Scout, she has continued to live by this creed: “Leave a place better than you found it.” Proudly, she noted, “I was ‘green’ long before anyone ever heard the term ‘carbon footprint.’ ”

In the early days, the Eco Team held brown bag lunch sessions that occasionally included a guest speaker from an environmental group. Since then, the Kaiser institute has upped the volume of its recycling tremendously.

“Our recycling vendor is able to give us feedback and tell us how many trees we are saving each month,” Kershner said of the contractor that hauls away shredded paper. “That has really increased our participation.”

The institute has gradually added more materials, such as plastic and cardboard, to its recycling routine. It has benefited from having electronic health records since 1997. To reduce paper consumption, employees are encouraged to communicate via e-mail as much as possible, Kershner said.

Her employer “has been very green for almost 20 years” and has won national awards for recycling. “I have seen many practices being changed—reducing the packaging of certain materials, decreasing the number of paper drapes put into a sterile OR kit,” she said. “Many of those ideas came from nurses speaking up and pointing out the incredible waste generated by certain practices.”

As the largest contingent of the health care workforce, nurses must learn to recycle, according to eco-friendly health advocates. They handle at least 95 percent of supplies that enter and exit a medical facility. So it’s essential to know how to properly dispose of these products, said Bettie Kettell, RN, a surgical nurse at Mid Coast Hospital in Brunswick, Maine and chair of the Environmental Impact Committee.

“I was appalled by the enormous amount of waste generated in the operating room. Much of it is the wrapping of sterile goods that are opened before the patient enters the OR,” said Kettell, who asked for job restructuring that led to her role as pollution prevention coordinator. Now, a fifth of her 40-hour workweek involves recycling and waste management.

“We are currently switching to a single-stream approach where there is no need to sort,” she said, explaining the “co-mingling” of paper, glass, cardboard and various types of plastic. “With this system, we will capture many more waste streams that previously were not recycled.”

Kettell, who developed asthma probably due to a latex allergy, has become more conscious of exposure to toxins in the workplace. Now, her goal is to make the OR and other parts of medical facilities safer places for all.

“We need to address many aspects of environmental health issues that surround the delivery of care in health care,” Kettell said. “Health care must become healthier.”

For more information visit Health Care Without Harm.