The Vinyl Council of Australia, one of the PVCMed Alliance members, has launched a PVC Recovery programme. This programme consists in education resources for the healthcare industry to implement recycling of commonly used PVC medical products.

Healthcare consumes a large number of IV fluid bags made from PVC as well as large quantities of tubing and oxygen masks. A pilot PVC Recovery in Hospitals program demonstrated that these kinds of PVC medical products can be separated relatively easily by hospital staff after use and recovered for recycling into new products such as non-slip floor mats.

For hospitals, some of the key challenges in implementing waste recovery include changing behaviour, finding storage space for waste and bins and the logistics of moving waste. It is essential to minimise contamination by other materials in the PVC bins. This project ensures that good planning, ongoing education and liaison with the hospital’s waste management team and contractors are put in place to help them overcome these issues.

Read the full story and discover more about this waste management initiative here or see the programme in pictures