Our first Sustainable Packaging in Healthcare (SPH) workshop was a great success, with more than 80 participants from across the sector offering insights and feedback on packaging challenges and opportunities in a variety of areas.
If you haven't read the Workshop report, you can download it here, to find out more. The workshop slide deck can be downloaded here.
The inaugural workshop identified a number of priority issues, outlined in the summary report. These topics, combined with a short survey to ascertain urgency and time-frames, has informed the development of our next workshop agenda and provided an initial framework for a medium to long-term strategic work plan, taking a staged approach to the key focus areas.
Given the identification of PVC recycling as a high priority area requiring attention, our next workshop, on Thursday, October 15th, will expand on this and look at achieving some 'quick wins' on resource recovery for three high-value, widely-used yet challenging materials - PVC, Polypropylene and PET.
We will hear from three great speakers, engaged at various stages of the development and implementation process for recycling programs designed to recover and reprocess these materials:
- Sophi Macmillan - CEO, Vinyl Council of Australia | PVC Collection and Recycling
- Samantha Cross - Director, Circular Hub | Polypropylene Steri / Kim / Blue Wrap
- Lexi Crouch - Sustainability and Education Officer, Circular Hub | Polypropylene Steri / Kim / Blue Wrap
- Dr Kerstin Wyssusek - Director, Dept of Anaesthesia & Perioperative Medicine, Royal Brisbane & Women’s Hospital | Recovery of rigid PET Medical Device Packaging
We will then break into smaller discussion groups to:
- review each material recovery program in more detail
- review barriers to adoption (existing or potential)
- propose solutions to address barriers
- identify steps for SPH Working Group to expand the reach and impact across the national healthcare landscape.
NB: At registration, you will be asked to identify which breakout group you would like to join. Nominating your preferred group will assist us with the technical process of breaking into groups through Zoom, so we would appreciate your input to assist with making that process as smooth as possible on the day.
Finally, we will discuss a proposed pathway for the Working Group to continue progress into 2021 and we look forward to gathering your feedback on our approach.
Plenty of work to do and we look forward to welcoming you to the next workshop to get things moving. If you feel that the subject matter covered in the upcoming session is not relevant to you, feel free to opt out this time around. We will however, keep you informed on further workshop sessions and project activities through our core mailing list, enabling you to participate wherever your feel relevant.
If you have any questions, please contact Jayne Paramor, Sustainability Partnership Manager at APCO (jparamor @ packagingcovenant.org.au)
(It's amazing what you can do with Steri / Blue / Kim wrap - check out The Blue Wrap Project for some fashion inspiration. The remarkable ensemble below was designed by Julia Gailen Designs for a fashion parade hosted by global healthcare not-for-profit Partners for World Health in 2014, to highlight the challenges of sterile wrap recovery and recycling...)
