Waste Reduction Week (October 21 – 27)

This year, Waste Reduction Week in Canada takes place from October 21-27. It is an opportunity to celebrate our environmental efforts and achievements to date, and encourage new ideas and solutions to reduce our waste. Reducing the amount of waste you create is an easy way that you can help make a difference.

TBRHSC’s Green Team is committed to reducing our environmental footprint and supporting these efforts through our extensive recycling programs onsite which includes:

  • All Plastics #1 – #7
  • Cardboard & Paper
  • Cans & Scrap Metal
  • Batteries
  • Electronic Waste

We continue to setup ‘Green Suites’ within select departments, for those areas looking to champion their department’s recycling initiatives. These ‘Green Suites’ are a centralized area for managing and sorting recycle materials to minimize the amount of waste going to landfill.

Nutrition & Food Services

  • Cutlery and food containers in Retail are certified legislation compliant.
  • Patient cutlery has also gone to sustainable cutlery.
  • Lean Path – Program that tracks food waste and allows us to manage for reduction.
  • ORCA- Food Digestive System introduced May, 2023 to prevent food waste from going into landfill. Since its inception, we have diverted 29,600 lbs of food waste.
  • Reusable merchandise is also available in Flavours Café.

We are also working on introducing two new recycling programs onsite:

PPE Recycling

  • Includes recycling of uncontaminated masks/gloves/gowns/booties/etc.
  • The uncontaminated PPE is shipped to ‘LifeCycle Revive’ in Southern Ontario.
  • The contents are sterilized and processed into pellets, which are then in turn used to create recycling bins, bed pans, etc.

Keurig K-Cup Recycling

  • Intended for areas with kitchenettes, where Keurig coffee brewing equipment is in use.
  • The pods are collected then sent to EMTERRA for processing.
  • The pod components are separated – grounds become compost & the plastic is recycled.

We also encourage you to visit the Green Team page on the intranet, as well as the EcoSuperior website to learn about more ways you can get involved and support the local sustainability efforts. 

Over the last year we have introduced reusable sharps containers and biodegradable nitrile gloves.

Our reusable sharps containers reduce the amount of plastic going into our landfills. Our old disposable sharps containers saw in excess of 12,500 containers going into our landfill.

With over 11 million gloves used at TBRHSC per year, our new biodegradable gloves will achieve 90% biodegradability in 490 days as opposed to the original nitrile glove that took close to 200 years.