BUILDING STRONG COMMUNITIES
19
Diverting Waste
Recycling sounds simple, but can
actually be quite challenging in a
healthcare environment. Ensuring that
generated waste does not impact
employee or patient safety is critical and
we need to carefully consider how we
dispose of the waste so that we don’t
introduce risks to our communities.
Our waste management program is
founded on a cycle of continuous
improvement. Through audits of our
facilities we identify what types of waste
are generated, how they are being
sorted and opportunities to reduce
our overall footprint. Working with
employees, suppliers and our waste
management vendors, we challenge
each group to change how we sort,
segregate and treat our different waste
streams. All of this is supported through
training and education and is monitored
on a monthly basis to ensure that we
are staying on track.
To improve participation in the recycling
and composting programs at our
laboratories, we have added more bins
to our lunchrooms and have posted
information on how to sort the waste.
We’ve also worked with our suppliers to
buy products in bulk whenever possible
to minimize packaging and, where
appropriate, we donate or repurpose
equipment such as ECG beds, ice
packs, Holter monitors, heat sealers,
water baths and refrigerators to groups
like the Rotary Club to keep them out of
landfills.
We diverted over
900,000 kg
of materials from landfills
in Ontario and British
Columbia in 2016.
