Renal recycling

What has your take on recycling within your unit been?

My colleagues and I are wondering where we stand in our efforts to do our part in keeping the environment clean. There have been a few dedicated staff members who have taken recycling seriously in their homes for several years. They started asking questions like... "Why don't we save our pop and water botdes and return them for money we can use in our 'kitty'?"... and "Why are we throwing all these K bath containers in the garbage?"

One RN gathered the botdes, and she still takes them for recycling after several years. Cardboard was flattened by techs and put in a special bin for housekeeping.

When it came to K bath and bicarb containers, things have been slower in solution-finding. One leader in the community-centred unit, who has to arrange housekeeping and garbage collection, set out to find a service that would pick up plastics. That has been a successful system for years now.

At the hospital level, even within the same region, practices have differed.

It seems to have taken the determined quest of one or two people in our unit to keep bringing up the issues at staff meetings and talking to the manager, as well as getting in on general staff committees that had similar concerns.

Who would separate the materials? A system has to function so well that staff doesn't have to think about it. Where would collections be kept? These questions went round and round, deciding who would have which responsibility to set this up.

About one year ago, the region hired a coordinator for the recycling challenge. This was someone dedicated to the universal problem. He was prompt to answer our call for help. He looked at the current practices, where bins could be made easily available and added his ideas of what we could recycle.

Another turning point was the return of Fran, one of our techs. Last April, she came back to the hospital unit from the community where she saw how recycling could work. And because she cares, she has researched how many plastics we use and the cost of some materials we use. These things make us all more aware. We now know how much each piece of a set-up is costing, and that disposing used plastics and paper in hazardous waste garbage is measured and billed by weight.

As a result, clean used plastics like IV bags and K baths immediately go into a handy plastic bag at the bedside. Blue bins are also used, and Fran discovered the price for each of these is $32.00 cheaper if we purchase them at a local supply store.

Bicarb is now draining through the dialysis machines and through a neutralizer, saving the huge amounts of water we used to use to drain bicarb in the utility sinks.

By the way, did you know gelfoam costs $64.00 per box? And that Tip Stops seem to work just as well for a quarter of the price? Imagine all the times we follow the note in the Kardex and continue using what might have been a one-time solution for months and years. And sometimes a patient may request two gelfoam, believing it is truly necessary, without our trying something else?

Can you imagine the possibilities now? What if manufacturers provided recycling arrangements when contracts are signed, across the world?

Can we encourage each other by incentives like bringing in all our pens that have made it home in our pockets? Or can we all participate in a contest about how to save costs or cut down on disposables?

Please consider writing to me or to the editor, Gillian, to share your ideas and the recycling habits in your unit.

The Kidney Foundation urges us all to recycle our organs. Let's recycle everything we can.

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Copyright � 2010 Canadian Association of Nephrology Nurses and Technologists

[Author Affiliation]

Please share a meaningful moment of learning from your professional life. Send me your idea and I'll help you publish it. Send to Lee Beliveau at e-mail: 54l0603@telus.net

By Lee Beliveau, RN, CNeph(C), staff nurse, hemodialysis unit,

at Surrey Hospital, Surrey, British Columbia