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Home Newsroom Mighty effort by microbiology to cut waste at Concord

Mighty effort by microbiology to cut waste at Concord

Media Contact
2nd July, 2024

The crew at NSW Health Pathology’s microbiology laboratory at Concord Hospital have been punching above their weight when it comes to sustainability in the workplace.

Ash­leigh Gat­ley is a Tech­ni­cal Offi­cer at the Micro­bi­ol­o­gy and Infec­tious Dis­eases lab­o­ra­to­ry at Con­cord and has always been inter­est­ed in sustainability.

She says she got seri­ous about reduc­ing the lab’s waste and boost­ing recy­cling when she was appoint­ed as the lab’s sus­tain­abil­i­ty offi­cer in late 2022.

“NSW Health Pathol­o­gy began an ini­tia­tive to encour­age depart­ments to be more sus­tain­able by allo­cat­ing a sus­tain­abil­i­ty offi­cer,” Ash­leigh said.

“I was sur­prised at how lit­tle we were recy­cling. It saves mon­ey in some instances and is much bet­ter for the envi­ron­ment, so it’s a no-brain­er for me!”

Since May 2023, Ashleigh’s ini­tia­tives have divert­ed a huge amount of waste going to landfill.

Specimen label recycling

Pre­vi­ous­ly going to clin­i­cal waste, these labels are now recy­cled in spe­cial­ly designed “con­fi­den­tial­i­ty bins” to pro­tect patient information.

This has saved approx­i­mate­ly 23kg of waste per month going into clin­i­cal waste, as well as sav­ing the cost of incin­er­at­ing the labels.

Two young women wearing white lab coats holding up a soft plastic recycling bin.
Nikol Andacic and Geor­gia Koos with one of the soft plas­tics recy­cling bins.

Soft plastics

Bins labelled ‘soft plas­tics’ are placed in mul­ti­ple loca­tions around the lab­o­ra­to­ry and emp­tied daily.

The waste is col­lect­ed week­ly by the hos­pi­tal and has saved approx­i­mate­ly 960 litres of plas­tic waste from land­fill each month.

Coffee grounds

Used cof­fee grounds from the lab­o­ra­to­ry cof­fee machine are col­lect­ed in buckets.

Staff take home to reuse in worm farms and gardens.

A bucket labelled "Coffee Grounds Only" on a kitchen bench near a coffee machine.
Mak­ing use of the lab’s used cof­fee grounds.

Ice brick disposal

Gel ice bricks used to keep deliv­er­ies cool are safe­ly dis­posed of down the sink, sav­ing the bricks being sent to landfill.

Each pack is made of a 100% recy­clable out­er pack­age and con­tains a non-tox­ic gel inside.

Other ongoing initiatives

  • Switch­ing lights off/ machines around the lab to con­serve power
  • Less plas­tic loop waste by the pur­chase of incin­er­a­tor and using Bun­sen burn­er alternatives
  • Recy­cle unused paper to re-use into scrapbooks
  • Keep hard ice bricks in store­room for staff to re-use.

Ash­leigh says it’s been a big team effort to get the recy­cling projects hap­pen­ing and sup­port­ed by staff.

“We dis­cuss our sus­tain­abil­i­ty projects week­ly at our lab­o­ra­to­ry meet­ings, so this is mas­sive for keep­ing the con­ver­sa­tion going. If we always have some­thing we are work­ing on, it encour­ages the lab to keep ideas flowing.

“I don’t have to work to get our team enthused about sus­tain­abil­i­ty. It’s some­thing every­one cares about and appre­ci­ates; it just takes some­one who cares enough to go out of their way to make the effort and the rest will get involved on their own.”

A woman in a white lab coat, leans on a large black recycling bin.
Ash­leigh with some of the larg­er recy­cling bins at the lab.

Her next chal­lenge for improv­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty at the Con­cord laboratory?

“The next thing is to try and make the lab com­plete­ly paper­less, this has been a goal for the lab long before I start­ed here, so it is a long process,” she said.

“Anoth­er big issue is recy­cling our hard plas­tics – we are cur­rent­ly try­ing to fig­ure out a way to get this done.

“We also want to get more of the hos­pi­tal involved in these projects, and more of NSW Health Pathology.”

Ash­leigh has some great advice for teams hop­ing to make a start on being more sustainable.

“Just start small. One project at a time can make all the dif­fer­ence, even if it’s just start­ing the conversation.

“I would also sug­gest join­ing the Min­istry of Health’s Net Zero group – they post about sus­tain­abil­i­ty projects and relat­ed news all the time. It’s a great group to be part of if any­one is inter­est­ed in sustainability.”

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