Recycling

Each year, millions of tons of medical waste are thrown into our rapidly filling landfills. Ascent's GO GREEN^SM recycling program is a partnership designed to dramatically reduce this medical waste for hospitals that elect not to engage in a reprocessing program. The GO GREEN^SM program recycles the metals and plastics from devices instead of throwing them into the landfill.

Using Ascent's Advantage™ collection system, GO GREEN^SM dramatically reduces disposable large sharps container and medical waste disposal costs—by 70% or more. The American Hospital Association (AHA), American Nurses Association (ANA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have jointly agreed to minimize medical waste 30% by 2005 and 50% by 2010. This joint agreement is a major initiative to minimize medical waste, prevent pollution and eliminate dangerous toxins from the environment.

The GO GREEN^SM program will also provide your facility with reports of the medical waste that has been eliminated from your med/waste stream. These medical-waste minimizations can be submitted to Hospitals for a Healthy Environment (H2E) and possibly earn an award in the "Partners for Change" program. This prestigious national award recognizes your facility's commitment to the environment in the community it serves.

The "environmentally friendly recycling" of this program will be readily supported by the staff. Ascent provides a reusable 17-gallon "recycling" container that replaces your large disposable sharps container. The reusable sharps container itself eliminates 15 percent or 1.2 tons of plastic medical waste in the typical 10 operating room facility.

What could be more convenient and easier for your staff than this? Almost everything that went into your large disposable container, now goes into the large teal "recycling" sharps container.

OSHA, DOT and state medical-waste regulations mandate that medical waste be kept out of the recycling containers. Therefore, six unrecyclable sharps medical waste items generated in the operating room will have to be collected in a three-gallon medical waste container. These six items are: suture, glass vials, prep razors, needle counters, needles & syringes and neuro / spinal bits, burrs & blades.

Source separating these six unrecyclable medical-waste items will ensure regulatory compliance for your facility. More importantly the metals and plastics from the devices you currently throw away have only one destination after use—our recycling collection container.

GO GREEN^SM program outline:

• The hospital will recycle ALL reprocessable devices that are being disposed of in your waste stream. This includes: Operating Room devices, EP devices, Endoscopic devices, DVT sleeves and Pulse Oximeter Sensors.
• The hospital will remove the disposable large medical waste sharps containers from the operating room collection sites.
• Ascent will place 17-gallon, FDA registered, 510(k) cleared reusable sharps recycling containers where your medical waste sharps containers were located.
• Ascent will take ownership and full responsibility of the recyclable devices, relieving your hospital of its responsibility after they leave your facility.
• The hospital will provide three-gallon medical waste sharps containers for the collection and disposal of the six unrecyclable medical waste items.
• The hospital will exchange, and if mutually agreed upon, box and ship the recycling containers to Ascent.
• Ascent will provide quarterly medical-waste reduction reporting for H2E.

"For the sake of future generations," says Ascent's CEO, John Grotting, "we must leave this world in better condition than we found it. It is industry's responsibility to lead in environmental stewardship. Therefore, I am committing Ascent and its resources to leading the way, fulfilling our corporate environmental responsibility and encouraging both business and healthcare to 'Do the Right Thing!'"