Medical Industry Round Table

Managing Medical Plastics: A Whole-Systems Strategy Session

January 27, 1999
8:30 - Noon
Harborview Medical Center's Research and Training Building
300 9th Avenue Room 121

Discussion Notes

"Managing Medical Plastics" Seminar January 27, 2000

Plastic Challenges
- Hauler only accepts limited types of plastics
- Cost of disposing of large volumes of plastic
- Unclear about the types and volumes of plastics in the waste
stream. Need to look into waste characterizations
-Contamination from contents of plastic containers
-Time and labor costs of separating recyclables from non-recyclables
-Finding recycling options for medical plastics - proximity of
resources - need to do organization
-Markets for plastic commodities
-Storage
-Transportation; developing a hauler system for collecting the plastics
-Vendors not asked about environmental commitment (a vendor issue)
-Currently nowhere to recycle expanded polystyrene
("styrofoam/foam blocks")
-Pipet tip box recycling:

- What resin type? (They aren't labeled.)
- Local recycler?
- Scientific Mountain? (for Targeted Genetics or UW?)
-Disposal costs are very couched and many people are
unaware of them. Need to get waste disposal costs back into the product development accounting side of things

-Lack of legislation mandating the use of recycled commodities when making new products
- Collection of plastics within the medical institutions
-The customers in hospitals don't want things with recycled content in them so it makes it hard to buy recycled.
-Ensuring that the hospital is providing a clean, sorted recycling stream
-Confusion over whether waste haulers will accept #1 and #2 media bottles, even when triple rinsed

Plastic Solutions
-Collectively do the following things: - Characterize the medical waste stream, particularly plastics - Research recycling markets for materials - Estimate costs
-Leverage haulers to accept plastics
-Ask for it as a customer; send letters of intent/ desire to recycle and work recycling language into new and renewed contracts
-Work with Timbron on recycling expanded polystyrene
-According to Waste News the market for recyclables has been flat but are now increasing
-If hospital groups could be formed to look at the volume and flows of plastics in their institutions it would make plastic recycling implementation a lot easier. The hospitals need to explore:

- the volume of what they want to recycle,
- the commodity value of what they want to recycle,
- the disposal costs they could avoid,
- then they need to create a balance sheet to see how it all equals out.
- King County Solid Waste Division and the Business and Industry Recycling Venture are available to assist hospitals with these steps
- If each hospital could reduce/ recycle enough to reduce on haul trip per week, that's a big savings

· Blue wrap recycling pilot project
- Blue wrap is made of pure #5 polypropylene, roughly 80% of what is used in the hospitals is suitable for recycling
- Legacy has devoted space to collect plastics and they collect blue wrap from 20 other hospitals. They are paid $10,000 by Kimberly Clark for providing this service. Owens and Minor then backhauls blue wrap to their warehouse.
- The blue wrap currently goes overseas for processing
- There are about 20 lbs of blue wrap per case
- The hospitals should tell their suppliers they want to recycle blue wrap when they set up the contract with their blue wrap distributor. This is probably not necessary but it encourages the program.
- Re-Sourcing Associates has interest in recycling film in Puget Sound; Portland; Vancouver, BC; and San Francisco. They are willing to collect and store, at their site, polyethylene and polypropylene films, including blue wrap, from hospitals. They have the capacity to handle all of the local hospitals.
- Ken Calhoun (Kimberly Clark) offered to, if a local blue wrap program is piloted, do the in-hospital training to ensure that there is a clean waste stream for the blue wrap.
- Glen Martens (Smurfit) said he thought Smurfit would be interested in providing hauling services for the blue wrap.
- It should be noted that the blue wrap pilot project is being approached cautiously and will be carefully planned

- Interested organizations: 1. Group Health 2. Harborview 3. Kimberly Clark 4. Multi-Care 5. Northwest Hospital 6. Re-Sourcing Associates 7. Smurfit 8. Swedish 9. UW 10. Virginia Mason 11. Rabanco (not present) 12. Waste Management (not present)

· Collectively work with manufacturers to change resins (where necessary) to aid recycling

- What are the FDA regulations regarding plastics? How do we find out? Can manufacturers switch to other plastic types very easily?

· Plastic bottle (#1 & #2) recycling

- Clarify contamination and acceptance issues for #1 and #2 containers (media, pill, and hazardous-material containers)
- Interested organizations: 1. Multi-Care 2. Virginia Mason 3. UW

· Expanded polystyrene (styrofoam) recycling pilot project - Work with Timbron to see about getting a densifier sited here in the Seattle area

- Hospitals need to be informed of ways to reuse/ recycle packing peanuts
- There is a possibility that within the UW system, they might be able to host a Timbron expanded polystyrene compressor.
- Interested organizations: 1. Covington 2. Swedish 3. UW 4. Virginia Mason

· PVC and latex

- PVC and latex don't seem to be very active issues
- Alternatives exist for PVC drip bags and latex gloves but they are expensive
- Group Health has switched to non-latex gloves

· Work with purchasing departments, focus on environmentally preferable purchasing (EPP)

- ask purchasing to begin purchasing only biodegradable peanuts,
- ask purchasing for recycled content products ("close the loop")
- example: Sage syringe boxes - People in the medical institutions would like to see recycled content products available. When might these be available?
- The hospitals need to tell their suppliers that they want to recycle when they set up their contracts
- Most medical institution representatives present stated that they had little or no control over the purchasing of items
- Some hospitals seem to have no central purchasing or recycling
- Some hospitals have every little department use their own credit card if the purchase is under a certain limit
- Some hospitals have everyone place orders online
- Some hospitals have all purchasing go through contracts at the corporate level
- Group Health is adopting new purchasing policies and soon no vendors will be allowed into the facilities.
- It was stated at the seminar that Group Health had purchased 600 computers from Dell and they had all come without any packaging. Upon verification of this, it was found to be inaccurate though packageless computers remain a goal for them.
- Seminar attendees said it was easy to identify the purchasing people within their organizations but they felt trying to get those people to a seminar on environmentally preferable purchasing would be difficult.

- Medical facilities with "green teams": 1. Group Health 2. Northwest Hospital 3. Swedish Medical Center 4. UW