Renae McBrien1
1Queensland Children’s Hospital
This oral presentation will compliment our 2022 ACIPC presentation and continue to showcase the environmental performance at Children’s Health Queensland Hospital and Health Service. We have fostered positive staff culture change and championed sustainable and socially responsible reform over our procurement, transport, waste and food systems. We have collectively empowered and educated our 5000+ workforce, young people, families and care partners to pursue innovative ways to minimise our environmental impact by establishing an advanced recycling system through our CHQ Green Team – our Environmental Stewardship Network.
This presentation will focus on financially and environmentally sustainable projects. CHQ will profile the environmental initiatives that protect our planet but also deliver large opportunities to generate revenue and cost saving measures within any health care service. Children’s Health Queensland is projected to save and/or earn over $1.8 million in 2023.
Some of our key sustainability and procurement initiatives that have contributed to this sustainable care are:
• The removal of single-use plastic injection trays across our hospital and replaced with reusable plastic trays, saving over $25 000 a year.
• The innovative ‘CHQ Medical Market Day’ which is an organisational monthly ‘swap met’ for consumables and supplies. This large scale project will save our hospital over $900 000 in 2023.
• Dedicated metal recycling buckets in wards for single-use item recycling including scissors, forceps, tweezers and EEG wires that generate revenue of over $15 000 s year.
• All hospital batteries (including pace makers) recycled as part of CHQ’s commitment to the National Battery Stewardship Council. Saving over $20 000 a year.
• Catering assistants collecting unperishable foods for food rescue programs and Kitchen staff capturing 92% of all food waste generated from the wards, as well as 100% of kitchen production is segregating into our organic composting stream.
• Hospital wide face to face education programs to empower clinical staff to correctly segregation regulated waste, leading to a monthly 10 tonne reduction in clinical waste generated within the hospital that saves $64 000 a year.
• Rehabilitation teams and CHQ at Home consumers collect used crutches, moon boots and slings, to be donated to health care in the Pacific Islands.
Children’s Health Queensland is rethinking and reinventing how we manage our consumables across our hospital and to break down silo cost centres. We manage our waste through infection management and prevention consultation, to educate our staff to apply the correct clinical decision at the source. We have driven an overhaul of commingle or mixed recycling to build a modular single stream recycling waste system. We hold waste in its highest value form for as long as possible and all staff segregate our hospital waste into single recycling streams to become ‘a la carte’.
Our sustainable waste management and procurement projects allow the environmental science to influence our clinical practise. We have actively reduced single use products from our procurement and standardised clinical practise through key stakeholder consultation, we have established robust infection control processes and clinical criteria to drive reusable products and equipment where clinically appropriate.
This presentation will provide an opportunity to share the successful implementation of The Children’s Health Queensland Environmental Sustainability Plan during a pandemic. It will showcase the financial and environmental success, that can be achieved when we value and protect our waste.
Biography
Renae McBrien is the Environment Consultant for Children’s Health Queensland. She also works as a radiographer, with over 23 years of clinical health experience. Renae McBrien is passionate about building sustainability into our health care system and has worked across many Brisbane hospitals to develop innovative ways to design waste out of health. Renae has been instrumental to deliver a widespread staff culture change that drives a diverse resource recovery strategy. This sustainable strategy has removed over 500 tonnes from landfill in 2021 alone through 36 single recycling streams.
Renae’s work has recently been featured on the ABC War on Waste TV series which captured over 4 million views worldwide. She has awarded the 2019 and 2020 Brisbane City Council Waste Innovation Award and the 2021 Brisbane City Council Waste Champion Award.