Blue planet, green ideas | A mini sorting center to recycle more

To reduce the volume of waste it generates, a hospital has set up a small sorting center for recyclable materials. This generates income – and savings – in addition to helping to reintroduce people struggling with mental health problems back into the labor market.

Jean-Thomas Léveillé
The Press

Émile Baba and his “trainees” are not idle: recyclable materials to be sorted accumulate in their small premises at the Pierre-Boucher hospital in Longueuil.

Everything goes: paper – which must be shredded to protect patients’ personal data –, cardboard, metal and, above all, plastic.

An astronomical amount of plastic.

“We generate matter in a hospital, it’s crazy,” exclaims Martin Lesage, head of the hospital’s hygiene and sanitation department.

But since most of this plastic is not accepted in sorting centers, since it is not packaging or containers found in stores, it was previously sent to landfill: packaging for sterile material, tubes for breathing apparatus, polypropylene cloths used to transport sterile material and many others.

About ten years ago, the hospital set up a “sorting tray” to recover materials that could not be sent to the sorting centre.

Last May, it took the next step by acquiring the necessary equipment to sort all of its recyclable materials and compact them into bales, which allows it to send them directly to conditioners and recyclers.

“My vision was to have our own sorting centre,” explains Martin Lesage, who believed in the need to sort the hospital’s residual materials at the source in order to recover them better.

Savings

The hospital previously paid $225 a week to send its recyclables pell-mell to a sorting center; now he earns income from his sorted materials.

Paper and cardboard have brought in some $6,500 since May, and the institution has stopped using the services of companies specializing in paper shredding, saving nearly $15,000 a year.

Plastic, on the other hand, does not generate income, but it considerably reduces the landfill bill.

As a result, the equipment installed will pay for itself in less than a year and Martin Lesage forecasts net income of $35,000 per year, sums that will be paid into the green fund of the Integrated University Health and Social Services Center (CIUSSS). of Montérégie-Est.

“We have the reputation of having the most beautiful bales in Quebec! », boasts Martin Lesage.

It is because its materials are well separated from each other that the Pierre-Boucher hospital manages to promote them in this way, underlines Nathalie Robitaille, executive director of Synergie Santé Environnement, an organization of people from the health sector that helps establishments in the sector to improve their environmental practices and which accompanies the Pierre-Boucher hospital in its efforts.

Reduce, reuse, recycle… and reintegrate

Former hospital patients are responsible for sorting recyclable materials.

These “trainees” obtain an increase in their income from social assistance for their work, a program financed by Emploi Québec and managed by the organization D’un Couvert à l’autre, which works for the social and professional reintegration of people affected by schizophrenia.

“It allows them to be recognized other than by the label of the disease,” explains Marie-Françoise Fayolle, mental health coordinator at the hospital, pointing out that this type of initiative reduces addictions to gambling and consumption. and decreases the duration of hospitalizations, which has a downward impact on health costs, although it is more difficult to quantify.

About fifteen interns are busy sorting the hospital’s recyclable materials, spread over two shifts a day, and sometimes even on weekends, when necessary.

This is how Émile Baba entered the sorting platform three years ago, as an intern, before becoming its supervisor in 2020, a real job.

The 43-year-old from Longueuil, who had experienced employment difficulties due to his schizophrenia, discovered the D’un Couvert à l’autre organization after being hospitalized in Pierre-Boucher.

Two other interns have since been hired in the hospital’s sanitation department, underlines Martin Lesage, who speaks of “an extraordinary victory”.

In a way, the hospital adds a fourth “R” to the famous “3 R” philosophy that guides the management of residual materials, says Martin Lesage jokingly: reduce, reuse, recycle… and reintegrate.