Operating rooms are a significant source of revenue for hospitals, but they are responsible for significant amount of waste generation. Some of the waste can be recycled. Anesthesiologists are an important member in the perioperative arena, and this can be a huge opportunity for them to lead the way. This article presents a recycling project in a community hospital where, under leadership of an anesthesiologist and with efforts of perioperative nursing staff, more than 170 pounds of waste is being recycled each day.
About 6 million tons of medical waste is generated by hospitals annually in the United States, approximately 30 percent of which comes from the O.R.1 Up to 20-40 percent of this waste could be recycled, but there are several barriers to accomplishing this goal. For people who do not work in the O.R. on a daily basis, the environment can be intimidating. It might seem that...
