How to: optimise waste disposal in your hospital

Waste is an inevitability in hospitals – but you can always employ new strategies to reduce it.

The problems of waste in all its variants has plagued hospitals, especially in the NHS where keeping budgets down is a major concern for government officials and the taxpayer. So when stories break about pointless waste, the collateral damage created can be enormous.

All this makes it imperative that the NHS, an increasingly straitened institution that’s having much of its budget cut, cleans up its wastage act.

In the past we’ve reported on spare food being thrown out needlessly, discussed the problems of germs in all aspects of healthcare, and looked at how waste impacts all these factors.

With that in mind, we’ve come up with a few bite-sized tips to help you put your house in order.

The tips

1. Inform all staff members that they have an obligation to be as sensitive to waste concerns as they do in any other aspect of their jobs.
2. Look at how you can optimise waste disposal. Perhaps you need more waste receptacles? Or maybe more informative posters need to be dotted around your workplace.
3. Patients are just as important as members of staff when it comes to effective waste disposal and awareness. Make sure you keep them informed.
4. Check if you need to increase the frequency of waste disposal times. One extra collection could clean up your hospital dramatically.
5. Know your provider and the extra skills they can offer. You could be missing out on extras you weren’t even aware of.

We can help with all of the above. So if you want to find out more about how to optimise your service, get in touch.