The Hospital Provincial de Castellón boils down to a quarter the health waste.

Castellón, 2011-September The measures of the environmental sustainability of the hospital Provincial de Castellón Consortium plan have succeeded in that Centre currently generates a quarter of waste biosanitarios that occurred two years ago, which resulted in a cost savings of 140,000 euros.

According to data provided by the Department of the environment, in January 2009 by each patient treated they were generating approximately 300 grams of waste, while today the figure stands at 75 grams.

These data exceed the target marking when it created the Department of environment, two years ago, gradually reduce the generation of waste arising from the activity of health until they drop by half.

To achieve this reduction is carried out several measures including training and awareness of the staff of the hospital, because their collaboration has been instrumental in segregating waste and minimise its production ”, explained managing director of the Centre, Nicolás Martínez.

In his view, this reduction of waste is very important if one takes into account that technological advances in the medical area have return increased both in volume and the variety of sanitary wastes, what must join both the economic cost as social implying its elimination.

These residues require compliance with measures of prevention of handling, collection, storage, transport, treatment and disposal, insofar as they represent risks for workers who handle them and the environment.

Environmental impact leads to the accumulation of infectious agents in soils, as well as air and microbiological pollution.

Therefore, the generation of health care waste is one of the major environmental aspects of a hospital and represents, in addition, one of the biggest costs with respect to environmental management, which is why the reduction of his generation is a priority ”, highlighted the economic directorMichael Llorens.

Waste management

The separation, collection and shipment of the waste follows a Protocol process, so it for each used a bag, container and legend of colors, sizes and different characteristics.

– The Group I conform the solid urban waste, i.e., the same that generates the rest of the population and which do not pose any special demands in his tenure as cardboard, paper, Office supplies or remnants of food. it
-Group II are similar to the urban health care waste and are deposited in a green bag. They come from not infectious patients as material used in healing, plasters or gauze.

– Special health waste are included in Group III and go to a black container with the legend risk waste ”. Infectious medical waste that are part of this group. This also includes sharp and sharp waste.

-Group IV covers waste that are subject to special requirements from the environmental and hygienic point of view. Include the cytostatic waste, remains of chemical substances, expired medicines, mineral or synthetic oils, waste with metals, from radiological laboratories, liquid waste, batteries and fluorescent tubes.

Energy

The programme’s commitment to the environment has also entailed a decrease in energy consumption by 6%, representing 165 tons less carbon dioxide emissions.

The energy efficiency plan resulted in the installation of new lighting equipment which serve to ensure the optimum conditions to carry out the tasks and contribute to an atmosphere in which the patient feels comfortable, and to have helped to reduce electricity consumption.

Thus the new teams have detectors presence in bathrooms and dressing rooms and are programmed for automatic startup on the soles of hospitalization in order to make the most of natural light.

With regard to water consumption, water economizer have been installed in all the taps and showers from the hospital, with what expected to halve spending on this resource.

The Centre has solar panels that serve to maintain the temperature of the hot water of the swimming pool located in the area of rehabilitation, as well as for the production of sanitary hot water, which represents 60 percent of the total water consumed the Center.

ISO 14001 standard

For all these actions of respect for the Environment Centre received the quality certification ISO 14001: 2004 which gives the Spanish Association for standardisation and certification-AENOR.

It’s an international standard for voluntary adoption by organizations that implemented a management system which allows them to define policy and objectives for improving the structure necessary to meet, as a minimum, the legislation that affects them in the field of environment and demonstrate its commitment to continuous improvement.

That provides a system of environmental management are many advantages to the Hospital, to their workers, patients and the general population, that it facilitates compliance with all applicable legislation on environmental issues such as noise, emissions into the atmosphere and waste management.