The Toulouse University Hospital reduces its waste by 35%
Thanks to the “Green bloc” project, the operating theaters of the Toulouse University Hospital are going green. 2019, a “Green team” Since made up of 15 block professionals from all trades combined, has joined a sorting and recovery project.
Operating theaters consume a lot of water and electricity. They also produce a large amount of waste.
“20 to 30% of the waste from a healthcare facility comes from operating theatres”. At the scale of the Toulouse University Hospital, which has 10 operating theaters and 63 intervention rooms, this represents more than 1,200 tonnes of waste per year.
In 2019, a team from the Pierre-Paul Riquet hospital in Toulouse, led by Dr Charlotte Martin, an anesthesiologist in neurosurgery and head of the emergency room unit, got involved in a sorting and recovery project called “Green Block”.
“We were in the operating room and we looked at the garbage cans and we realized that we were producing a lot of waste”emphasizes Dr. Charlotte Martin.
At home, we sort but we did not do it in the operating room. So we set up a “green team” made up of operating theater staff, caregivers, nurses, theater nurses, executives and doctors to create this waste sorting and recovery project.
Charlotte Martin, anesthetist, leader of the Green bloc project
A single intervention in the operating theater would generate as much waste as a family of four over a week. By using packaging with one and the same “pack” which contains all the equipment necessary for the operation, the “green team” succeeds in reducing its waste.
“We compared the old method and the new method and found that there was an 18-fold reduction in the number of blisters discarded for a given procedure,” confirms the professor of orthopedic surgery, Nicolas Bonnevialle.
It did not change the way we work, but on the other hand, it improved the working conditions of our nurses because there is much less manipulation to be done.
Nicolas Bonnevialle, professor of orthopedic surgery
Waste from the operating theater is sorted into two different containers:
- The (DAOM) waste assimilated to household waste, non-recovered rubbish that ends up in the incinerator,
- The (DASRI) waste from health care activities with infectious risks which contain three times more CO2 and more suitable for transport.
When we started the project in 2019, we were at 50% of our waste treated in DASRI and 50% of our waste treated in DAOM. With this new implementation, our waste treated in DASRI has been significantly reduced since we are now around 15% and the corollary is an increase in DAOM.
Charlotte Martin, anesthetist, leader of the Green bloc project
All this burnt garbage is then used to produce energy for heating and laundry. Other waste is recycled such as plastic, paper and metals used during the operation. They are first decontaminated and then sorted according to their sectors to be revalued afterwards.
All waste is systematically weighed to see the progress made.
resuscitation, another major waste supplier, joined the “Green bloc” project at the beginning of 2022 according to different protocols and circuits.