NECN.com reports that Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire, has joined the “Greening the Operating Room” initiative organized by Practice Greenhealth. In, NH Hospital Joins Project to Reduce OR Waste (01/11/2011), NECN reports that the goal of the program is “to collect data on how hospitals are saving money while reducing waste, energy and workers’ exposure to hazardous chemicals.” Dartmouth-Hitchcock discards “eight tons of trash a day.”
Joining the national initiative will allow Dartmouth-Hitchcock to quickly learn what other hospitals are doing to tackle the problem as well as share what it has done to “go green,” including reprocessing single-use devices such as blood pressure cuffs and forceps, recycling medical plastics and installing LED lighting.