Published: 2023-07-17 Author: Ken Edwards
The garbage and blue bin recycling system at LHSC is designed to ensure that the hospitals have a clean and safe environment for patients, staff, and visitors, while also promoting sustainable waste management and reducing the hospital's impact on the environment.
Our blue bin recycling program operates as a single-stream recycling system. This means that paper, plastic, glass, and metal can all be placed in the same bin and sorted and separated at a recycling facility using a combination of mechanical and manual processes.
Before that process, all recyclable materials should go to the right place, and Sodexo housekeeping staff has become a pivotal actor in that work. They are responsible for regularly collecting waste materials from garbage and recycling bins throughout LHSC.
The garbage and recycling blue bins are usually located next to each other and adequately differentiated, with transparent gray and blue bags, respectively.
These measures help visitors and staff quickly identify which materials should be placed in which bin and help Sodexo staff sort the material after collection.
Units have soiled utility rooms where the Sodexo staff store collected waste material in a cart. Once the cart is full, Sodexo takes it to the loading docks for sorting. At this stage, the clear blue bag materials are placed in the recycling compactor, compacted and prepared for recycling.
On the other hand, clear white bag materials are placed in the garbage compactor, where they are compacted and prepared for disposal at a landfill. Sodexo will sort clear gray bags with easily identifiable recyclable contents into the recycling compactor when necessary or possible. However, this is not the best practice.
When these compactors are full, the general waste contractor collects and empties them. Then, the garbage compactor is emptied at Twin Creeks landfill in Watford, ON. The contents of the Recycling compactor end up in a Material Recovery Facility in Etobicoke, ON, where the material is sorted and separated into reusable material commodities (aluminum, cardboard, various plastics, glass, etc.) and sold as raw materials to build new things.
Please check out this video for more information!
