The Healthcare Plastics Recycling Council (HPRC) is pleased to announce the appointment of Ascension to its Healthcare Facility Advisory Board (HFAB), a role intended to help the council set priorities and steer the agenda towards its mission of inspiring and enabling sustainable, cost-effective recycling solutions for plastic products and materials used in the delivery of healthcare. Specifically, HFAB members will assist the council in identifying high-value needs and opportunities for action, share first-hand perspective and understanding of recycling barriers that exist within their facilities, and provide access to data, information and resources at the hospital level.
“As with any effort focused on solution development, customer input is critical,” states Peylina Chu, Operations Director of HPRC. “As the largest nonprofit health system in the U.S., Ascension is perfectly positioned to provide valuable insights on the kinds of improvements in healthcare sustainability to which HPRC is committed.”
“As part of its Environmental Stewardship Program, Ascension has a focus on waste management and reduction,” says Lois Sechrist, Environmental Sustainability Analyst with Ascension. “Reducing environmental impact, driving down costs and providing benefit to the communities in which our hospitals are located by creating recycling jobs and reducing the size of landfills needed are all important opportunities, and keeping products out of the landfill at the end of their useful life is a high priority.”
HPRC recently published a how-to guide, called HospiCycle, for hospitals seeking to recycle clean, non-infectious plastic products and packaging waste generated in their facilities. Additional initiatives aimed at enabling recycling of healthcare plastics include plastic recycling pilot study programs at select healthcare facilities, feasibility and cost analysis of industry transition from paper to plastic labels, and resin testing of the technical limitation in plastics reprocessing.