Helping charities and reducing landfill: hospital’s Green Team makes an impact
Since August 2021, Logan Hospital’s Green Team has saved 831 hover mats from being sent to landfill – and, in doing so, provided comfort to rescued animals and birthing mothers overseas.
The single-use hover mats help transfer patients from one bed or area to another, and the hospital uses around 40 or 50 per week.
Green Team member and Waste Management Coordinator Dean Reynolds says this clever re-use means the hospital has so far helped divert around 930 kilos of landfill – and came in very handy to 2 charities.
Many of the mats have been donated to The Gift Project and are used to transport sick animals between treatment facilities or to reintroduce them back to the wild after receiving medical attention.
Others were used by local charity Donations in Kind, which shipped the mats overseas to assist birthing mothers.
‘Initially, the mats were going to developing countries, but at the moment 100 per cent of the mats are going to Ukraine and being used there,’ Dean says.
‘It’s great to see the mats being useful instead of going to landfill – and for people at the hospital, it’s as simple as putting the mats in a different bin for them to be transported away.
‘It’s a massive collaboration with a number of organisations involved but everyone is really on board.’
Other hospitals are also keen to join in.
‘We have other hospitals from the area, as well as smaller healthcare providers, now starting to drop off their hover mats here because they know we have these partnerships,’ he says.
Nurse Madeleine Arbon says her team is always seeking ways to reduce waste.
‘We do have a lot of necessary waste but we really do try to make a difference where we can,’ she says.
‘With the hover mats, we use so many – to know they are not going into waste is really great.’
The hospital has a range of other initiatives, including recycling printer cartridges, which are gathered and repurposed for road bitumen – around 40 kilogramsg of printer cartridges aper month.
It also recycles the Kim Guard wraps used to sterilise operating instruments, which are repurposed to make children’s playground equipment.
‘It takes lots of different people to make it work, but once something is in place, it’s easy to make a change,’ Dean says.
‘There’s a lot more to be done but we are really on the way.’
