Washington State’s Grays Harbor Community Hospital is yet another example of an organization committed to reducing its carbon footprint by utilizing new technologies in order to make large-scale recycling more accessible.
“Working together with Stryker Sustainability Solutions, the ‘leading provider of reprocessing and remanufacturing services for medical devices,’ [Coordinator] Gamboa says the hospital has been able to repurpose more items than ever before. ‘In the past five years, we’ve been able to send more and more items through this process,’ she says. This includes everything from medical drill bits and staplers to laparoscopic sheets and more.”
“’From October 2014 to October 2015, we sent 3,381 pound [of medical devices] to Stryker for reprocessing and remanufacturing,’ Gamboa explains. ‘With an average national cost of waste pickup of $0.30/pound, we saved $1,014.30, but most importantly, we helped divert a huge portion of waste from the landfill,’ she adds.”