Busselton Vet Hospital

Hospital Waste Recycling Hub

Our hospital recycling hub at Busselton Vets is where the sustainability magic happens, it is how we have reduced our landfill waste by more than 80%.

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Hospital Waste Recycling Hub

We have a dedicated area that we have organised to host our collection bins. This hub combines our medical waste, general waste, and our community recycling streams. It is impossible to list all the changes we made in the clinic, so we have listed the main items to give you some insight. If you would like more information, please get in touch.

What we recycle at Busselton Vet Hospital
Medical Waste

A big part of our business’s waste is medical waste that can’t be dealt with through residential recycling streams. Unfortunately, we aren’t able to eliminate many of these single-use items from our veterinary business due to both the integrity of our patient care and our ASAV Hospital of Excellence protocols. We have however partnered with Suez and Terracycle, and they have provided us with many new options to help us achieve our sustainability goals.

We are now able to recycle:

  • PCV Plastic – IV fluid bags & lines, giving sets & ET Tubes
  • Small Hard Plastics – uncontaminated syringes, catheter/needle caps, microchip implanters
  • Glass vaccine vials
  • Surgical masks
  • Disposable gloves
  • Blister Packs
General Clinic/Business Hard Waste

Unfortunately, every business and household creates general waste. Before we started our sustainability journey, we hadn’t really thought about the general waste items we mindlessly tossed into the rubbish and recycle bin. Once we set our minds to it, we managed to reduce the amount of rubbish we sent to landfills by more than 80%.

We recycle these general clinical waste items:

  • Used pet food cans/pouches
  • Vaccine trays
  • Damaged Elizabethan collars (cone of shame ☺)
  • Distilled water containers (we repurpose these if possible)
  • Milk bottles
  • Hard Plastic – food containers, shampoo bottles
  • Bottle tops/Bread tags
  • Writing instruments (pens)
  • Soft plastics (not medical)
  • Polystyrene Packaging
  • Drink bottles/Aluminum cans
  • Coffee Pods
  • Pet food packaging
  • Aerosols
Paper Waste
When we started looking at the volume of waste our business created, we were surprised to find that paper made up a large part of it. This paper waste isn’t able to be recycled, so it was mindlessly thrown in the bin. Once we started to break down our clinic protocols focusing on being sustainable and reducing waste, we realised that composting our paper waste would be the best way forward for our business.

We now compost:

  • Paper handtowel (we have swapped paper for fabric handtowels where appropriate)
  • Medical packaging paper – syringe/needle wrappers
  • Small light cardboard – medication boxes, tea leaf boxes, packaging, vaccine info cards
  • Small loose scrap paper
  • Newspaper – mostly used in kennels (we use newspaper as bin liners where possible)
  • Unsoiled cat litter
  • Autoclav bags

All our paper products are recycled, used front and back, and then shredded for the compost. We are working towards being a “paper-free’ business with all our “paperwork” becoming digital.

We have had a cardboard skip bin for years, so our bigger boxes get recycled via that service.

If you would like more information about our business recycling program please complete our Sustainability Enquiry Form!

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