Success Story: Blue Wrap Bonanza!

Seven years ago, when Environmental Services Manager Ken Gummer went to work at Good Shepherd Medical Center in Hermiston, OR, the only material that could be recycled in the rural region was cardboard.

A year later, Gummer attended a conference sponsored by the Oregon Center for Environmental Health (OCEH). (A nonprofit working to eliminate persistent bioaccumulative toxics (PBTs), OCEH has been an H2E Partner since 2002.) The conference was held at Good Samaritan Legacy Hospital in Portland, and Gummer was impressed by manager Tom Baldrick’s plastics recycling program. (An H2E Partner since 1999, Good Samaritan received an Environmental Leadership Award Winner in 2007.) Gummer thought Hermiston could do something similar.

Other successes came more quickly and easily. Using HIPPA regulations at both a stick and carrot, Good Shepherd was soon recycling all its paper. An Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) grant, obtained with help from OCEH, got Good Shepherd started recycling mercury-containing fluorescent light tubes.

He couldn’t drive all Good Shepherd’s used plastic to Portland, and with no vendor serving Hermiston, Gummer’s vision of a plastics program was frustrated until OCEH’s applied for a DEQ grant to start a plastic recycling program for rural Oregon. The first try failed, but they tried again next year and got the grant.

Gummer used grant funds to purchase laundry hampers for collecting sterile blue wrap in operating room suites. Sure enough, collection was easy, but transporting the blue wrap to a recycler was more of a challenge until Good Shepherd made an arrangement with Owens and Minor, a medical supplier that ships statewide – and was leaving Good Shepherd twice a week with an empty truck! Tom Badrick, Sustainability Officer for Legacy in Portland, Oregon, was already using Owens and Minor to ship plastic, so Gummer began sending his blue wrap to Portland, 180 miles away.

That arrangement worked fine until Gummer decided to build on success. Good Shepherd’s laundry is outsourced to Two Rivers Correctional Facility in Umatilla, OR. Gummer asked Alan Humphries, Two Rivers’ laundry manager, to send Good Shepherd’s blue plastic laundry bags back for recycling. Humphries went one better and asked if Gummer would like to recycle laundry bags from two other hospitals, as well as the prison’s own plastic bags. Gummer agreed. The more the merrier, right?

Well, not right off. Owens and Minor drivers were overwhelmed by 300 pounds of plastic-stuffed Super Sacks per week, a volume that jumped to 700 pounds when Two Rivers took on four more hospitals’ laundry. Their trucks couldn’t handle it. Gummer asked the local garbage company to start a plastics recycling program, but it refused. Companies in Washington’s Tri-Cities area would recycle the plastic, but only if Gummer would bring it to them.

Then Gummer heard from Jason Larvik and City Garbage Service, based in LaGrande, OR. Larvik’s company was actively seeking clients for medical waste and recycling pickup. City Garbage Service jumped at the mother lode of plastic Gummer had found, and took on Good Shepherd’s paper recycling contract for good measure. Larvik uses his shredding truck to haul both materials, taking on 3,000-pound loads of sacked plastic and then shredding the hospital’s confidential on top.

It’s an ingenious solution, but Gummer is collecting more plastic than City Garbage Service can haul. The next fix? A baler to compress the Super Sacks for stack-packing in Larvik’s truck – enabling Gummer to gather blue wrap from seven hospitals served by the prison laundry. Through City Garbage Service, Good Shepherd has applied for another DEQ grant to get the baler. If it comes through, Gummer plans to approach some of Hermiston’s many manufacturing plants to collect their plastics, too. The more the merrier, right?

• Contact: Ken Gummer, Environmental Services Manager
• Tel: 541-667-3538
• kgummer@gshealth.org
• H2E Partner since 2003

More on blue wrap recycling

Reusable Totes, Blue Wrap Recycling and Composting
Environmental Best Practices for Health Care Facilities, US EPA Region 9, November 2002.

Going Green — RNs Tackle Hospital Waste
NurseWeek, April 24, 2006.

The Blue Wrap Recycling Program: A Summary/Update
Medical Industry Waste Prevention Round Table, November 1, 2000.

Hospital Blue Wrap Source Reduction and Recycling
California Integrated Waste Management Board, 2006.

Upcoming Teleconferences

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Sept 14: Waste Volume Reduction Strategies in the Operating Room

Sept 21: Introduction to H2E and Data Collection

Sept 28: Making Medicine Mercury Free

Oct 05: Green Building Series – Sustainable Food Procurement and Design

Full teleconference schedule

New H2E Partners

Welcome to new H2E Partners! Thank you to regional organizers! See the full list of H2E Partners (both facility and organizational) here.

• Alameda County Medical Center, Oakland, CA
• Doylestown Hospital, Doylestown, PA
• Expedient Management Services, Inc., Atlanta, GA
• Florida Hospital, Orlando, FL
• Greater Baltimore Medical Center, Baltimore, MD
• Greenwood Village, CO
• Hall, Render, Killian, Heath& Lyman, P.C., Indianapolis, IN
• Hastings Orthopedic Clinic, Hastings, MI
• Highlands Cashiers Hospital, Highlands, NC
• Hospira, Inc., Lake Forest, IL
• Interior Maintenance Company, Inc., Lansdowne, PA
• Inviro Medical Devices, Inc., Duluth, GA
• Ketchum and Walton Co., Cincinnati, OH
• LSW Engineer, San Diego, CA
• MKK Consulting Engineers, Inc.
• Planetree, Derby, CT
• Saint Mary Medical Center, Walla Walla, WA
• Saline Memorial Hospital, Benton, AR
• Soderstrom Architects, P.C., Portland, OR
• St. Luke’s Hospital – Bethlehem Campus, Bethlehem, PA
• USA Green Clean Supply, Fort Walton Beach, FL
• Western Maryland Health System, Cumberland, MD
• Western Maryland Hospital Center, Hagerstown, MD
• Winthrop University Hospital, Mineola, NY

New to H2E or need a refresher? Join us for our next Intro to H2E teleconference on September 21 at 1 eastern, where we’ll review the H2E program and how we can support your organization’s environmental improvement strategies. Register for this free call on our website in the teleconference section. You will receive dial in information via email and then just dial up at the designated time.

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Becoming an H2E Partner is easy and gives you access to great resources. Founded by the US Environmental Protection Agency, the American Hospital Association, the American Nurses Association, and Health Care Without Harm, H2E provides practical tools to improve health care’s environmental performance and rewards the field’s best performers. Learn more at www.h2e.org.

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