Red Bag Waste Reduction
Red bag waste reduction is one of the sustainability initiatives that many healthcare facilities are implementing to take care of the environment, cut on cost, and to create a competitive advantage. The core purpose of this task is to examine costs and benefits that are associated with red bag waste reduction, and also examine the best practices of this sustainability imitative.
Cost and Benefits Associated with Red Bag Waste Reduction
Red bag waste reduction sustainability initiative is beneficial to the healthcare facilities implementing it, and also to the surrounding society. The following are some of the advantages that are associated with the red bag waste reduction strategy. First, implementing the red bag waste reduction strategy generate substantial saving for the health care facilities by reducing their operating expenses (McGurk, 2014). Secondly, it ensures that healthcare facilities operate in clean environments, and to the surrounding community, environmental pollution is reduced. Thirdly, the implementation of this initiative increases health workers’ safety, and this reduces medical costs. Lastly, reducing the red bag waste in hospitals reduces the total waste that is generated from a healthcare facility, and thus reducing the environmental pollution.
In this initiative, the healthcare facilities can reduce red bag waste by educating the health workers and putting posters in the operating room on the appropriate use of these bags and what should be put in them. The major cost of implementing this initiative is the training of health workers and putting posters. Therefore, the benefits outweigh the cost, and thus it should be embraced by many health care facilities (Huncke et al., 2012).
The Best Practices that Can be Used in Red Bag Waste Reduction Initiative
The following are some of the best practices that can be used in a red bag reduction strategy. Recycling single-use medical devices, using bio-elite red bags and eliminating solid waste from the medical stream. Other best practices that can be used are using blue wrap recycling and buying re-usable sharps containers (McGurk, 2014).
Word summary
McGurk, J. (2014). Greening of the Red-Bag Waste Stream. A Guidance Document for Successful Interventions to Reduce Medical Waste Generation in Californian Hospitals Environmental Management Branch: California Department of Health Services. Environmental Management Branch California Department of Health Services.
This article gives an overview of successful interventions that healthcare care facilities can implement to reduce red bag waste. The article gives a highlight of the merits that are associated with this sustainability measure. Some of the highlighted benefits are cost-cutting and taking care of the environment. The article also gives six interventions that can be used to reduce red bag waste in health care facilities. The given intervention includes using bio-elite bags, blue wrap recycling, single recycling use medical devices, and eliminating solid waste from the medical stream, among others. This article supports the red bag reduction strategy as it gives interventions that can be used to reduce this waste from health care facilities and the benefits of using this initiative.
Huncke, T. K., Ryan, S., Hopf, H. W., Axelrod, D., & Bell, C. (2012). Greening the Operating Room: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Redesign. Schaumburg, IL: American Society of Anesthesiologists.
This article focused on environmental sustainability that in anesthesia equipment, the impact of inhaled anesthetics, intravenous pharmaceutical environment issues, waste stream management, and recycling opportunities in health care facilities. The article also examined environmental sustainability from the perspective of operating rooms and perioperative settings. This article supports the red bag waste reduction initiative strategy as it in one of the recommended methods that healthcare facilities can use to cut on cost and also minimize the solid waste. Further, the article gives more focus to the issue of environmental sustainability, which is the goal of the chosen initiatives. Lastly, the article also gives some of the best practices that can be used by health care facilities to minimize waste.
References
Huncke, T. K., Ryan, S., Hopf, H. W., Axelrod, D., & Bell, C. (2012). Greening the Operating Room: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Redesign. Schaumburg, IL: American Society of Anesthesiologists.
McGurk, J. (2014). Greening of the Red-Bag Waste Stream. A Guidance Document for Successful Interventions to Reduce Medical Waste Generation in Californian Hospitals Environmental Management Branch: California Department of Health Services. Environmental Management Branch California Department of Health Services.