The Green Operating Room: Simple Changes to Reduce Cost and Our Carbon Footprint

Abstract

Generating over four billion pounds of waste each year, the healthcare system in the United States is the second largest contributor of trash with one-third produced by operating rooms. Our objective is to assess improvement in waste reduction and recycling after implementation of a Green Operating Room Committee (GORC) at our institution. A surgeon and nurse-initiated GORC was formed with members from corporate leadership, nursing, anesthesia, and OR staff. Initiatives for recycling opportunities, reduction of energy and water use as well as solid waste were implemented and the results were recorded. Since formation of GORC in 2008, our OR has diverted 6.5 tons of medical waste. An effort to recycle all single-use devices was implemented with annual solid waste reduction of approximately 12,860 lbs. Disposable OR foam padding was replaced with reusable gel pads at greater than $50,000 per year savings. Over 500 lbs of previously discarded batteries were salvaged from the OR and donated to charity or redistributed in the hospital ($9,000 annual savings). A “Power Down” initiative to turn off all anesthesia and OR lights and equipment not in use resulted in saving $33,000 and 234.3 metric tons of CO2 emissions reduced per year. Converting from soap to alcohol-based waterless scrub demonstrated a potential saving of 2.7 million liters of water annually. Formation of an OR committee dedicated to ecological initiatives can provide a significant opportunity to improve health care's impact on the environment and save money.

Reducing otolaryngology surgical inefficiency via assessment of tray redundancy

“…Furthermore, a formal cost analysis should be performed both with our data and that of other services. From an environmental perspective, much has been written about the amount of waste produced from the operating theatre [ 3 , 4 ]. The simple act of shrinking the contents of trays, and combining multiple trays into fewer trays, would immediately reduce the waste produced from the tray wrappings.…”

A critical analysis of the impacts of COVID-19 on the global economy and ecosystems and opportunities for circular economy strategies

“…Although suitable for large volumes, incineration produces toxic pollutants such as heavy metals, dioxins, acid gases, and hydrogen chloride ( Yang et al., 2009 ). Consequently, pre-COVID-19, besides incineration, reducing or preventing the volume of wastes in both categories is also shaped by the adoption of green purchasing practices ( Wormer et al., 2013 ). While this may help in the short term, a holistic approach to confronting this problem is the adoption of CE, which can facilitate the shift towards eco-efficient HCI, starting with lifecycle evaluations of medical products to the proposal for re-usable medical instruments ( Cimprich et al., 2019 ; De Soete et al., 2017 ; Penn et al., 2012 ).…”

Segregation for reduction of regulated medical waste in the operating room: a case report

“…The majority of hospital RMW is produced in the operating room (OR), and it considerably consists of disposable packaging and wrapping materials for the sterilization of surgical instruments [ 4 ]. After examining the composition of this kind of waste, we found that a number of items had a recycling mark indicating that they were recyclable.…”