Recycling projects

Healthcare uses a lot of single-use plastics. While single-use plastic is sometimes needed and unavoidable, the waste hierarchy recommends to first reduce use and where it is safe to do so to recycle.

All needles are protected by small rigid plastic caps to reduce the risk of injury. These plastic caps are uncontaminated, easy to separate and accepted for recycling. 

Following the success of 2 pilot projects, our local health district is working to make needle cap recycling a routine practice across several hospitals and community-based services.  

We partnered with 2 local plastic manufacturers, DEEPS Engineering and Resourceful Living, who can reprocess plastic needle caps into other products.

Successful pilot projects:

• In 2021, the Belmont Mass Vaccination Hub diverted 70kg of COVID-19 vaccine needle caps into building and engineering parts.
• In 2023, during the annual influenza vaccination campaign, the staff health and wellbeing team diverted 35kg of plastic needle caps from landfill.  

Our renal dialysis units have been exploring recycling opportunities to manage unavoidable single use plastic products that are not accepted by mainstream recycling facilities and would be otherwise be destined for landfill.  

Manufacturing the 2023 Hunter New England Local Health District Excellence Awards out of plastic waste generated from our renal dialysis units is symbolic of our ambitious Sustainability Strategy and shows us what is possible for the future. 

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Video transcript

2023 Hunter New England Health Excellence Awards | Trophies

I started out doing a PD (peritoneal dialysis) in about 2018.

That was going all right for a while. Then that didn't work out too well after it knotted up. 

And now I come in and I do three days a week, which is normally four hours.  

They tell me I'm pretty good for 72. And I put it down to this, I think.

The alternative is not much so, and what they do for me, I really appreciate it.

People need dialysis when their kidneys no longer work. There’re two forms of dialysis, the peritoneal dialysis which is performed at home by the patient and hemodialysis, mainly done in centre.

The treatment involves actually use of a dialyser, where the blood is cleaned. machines go through a process to make sure they're clean and safe for the patients to use.

So, every day it goes through a disinfect cycle and we have to use one of these little carts. These carts actually help with the cleaning process, so it's a heat disinfect with one of these carts.

So, every machine throughout Hunter New England has one of these every day.

We've got one of the most ambitious sustainability strategies across New South Wales Health - we're aiming to be carbon and waste neutral by 2030.  It's no longer possible to deliver health care to our community without addressing the health of our environment.

As an organisation we need to be able to say that we do no harm. This year we're really excited to say that our Excellence Award trophies are made out of recycled plastics from our dialysis units.

As well as recycling plastics for our trophies, our recycling partners' been collecting plastics for other purposes.   

We've managed to divert more than 117 kilos of plastic waste from our dialysis units this year, that would otherwise go to landfill.

This has saved 632 kilos of carbon emissions, which is roughly equivalent to charging 75 thousand smartphones.

Waste is only one part of our strategy; we're also looking at conserving water.

Our Tamworth dialysis unit has implemented some reverse osmosis technology into their unit to recycle water from the dialysis this process and redirect that into the system in the hospital.

Kidney disease and climate change have a two-way relationship. The rise in global temperatures and increasing frequency of extreme heat events is increasing the burden of kidney disease around the world.  

Haemodialysis is a process / treatment helps filter the blood of people whose kidneys are not functioning properly. It removes toxins, extra salt, and fluids from the blood, helping the body to keep a proper chemical balance.  

Haemodialysis uses a lot of energy and water, as well as excess amounts of single-use plastic waste. A North American study assessed the carbon footprint of a single treatment to be 58.9kg carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂-eq^₃).  

Key figures:

• Hunter New England LHD (HNELHD) provides about 41,000 haemodialysis treatments each year.
• Based on available data, the service’s annual carbon footprint is 2424.9 tonnes, equal to driving 9,758,000km in a standard car!
• Our sustainability team conducted waste audits and found every haemodialysis treatment generated 0.6kg of uncontaminated plastic waste (averaging 25 tonnes of recyclable plastic) every year.    

The uncontaminated plastic waste (polypropylene) is generally not accepted in mainstream recycling facilities. HNELHD partnered with  Resourceful Living, Muswellbrook Shire Council and The Melt to recycle the plastic waste from our renal dialysis units to manufacture award trophies for the 2023 Hunter New England LHD Excellence Awards.   

• In 2023, we diverted and repurposed 415kg of single-use plastic from landfill. It is equal to saving 2230kg of CO2 emissions and driving 13360km in a standard car.  
• As well as manufacturing the Hunter New England Local Health District Excellence Awards, Resourceful Living also used the hospital plastic to create tabletops, plant pots, home decor and jewellery.  
• The 2023 Hunter Manufacturing Awards awarded us the 2023 Collaboration Partnership Award with Resourceful Living.
• We’re working with suppliers to help reduce our plastic waste and recycle unavoidable single-use plastic items.  
• We buy well designed products that help with resource recovery and promotes a circular economy.