Find Out How Green Your Medical Facility is With Free Web-based Waste Calculator From Megadyne

Megadyne has released its Green Sheet Waste Calculator, a free web-based tool developed for hospitals and surgical centers to compare the medical waste produced by disposable electrodes and pencils and the waste savings from using reusable electrosurgical products.
 
The calculator requires only the number of operating rooms and number of electrosurgical cases completed per operating room per day. Using these numbers the Green Sheet Waste Calculator calculates and displays the waste weight in pounds, including:
- Daily waste amounts reusable compared to disposable
- Yearly waste amounts reusable compared to disposable
- Overall percentage waste that can be saved with reusable electrosurgical products

To really make a difference, everyone needs to do something to cut down on the waste we're putting in our landfills. We had an insight that if facilities could view in concrete numbers the actual waste that they were producing it may be the final push needed to make a change, says Melissa Fischer, RN, MSN, CNOR, clinical specialist and marketing product manager at Megadyne.Hospitals and clinics produce a tremendous amount of waste. Switching from disposables to reusable products is a simple way to reduce waste.

Surgical centers are constantly seeking ways to cut costs without cutting corners. Reusable products continue to gain in popularity because of the direct bottom line savings following the initial investment.

It is amazing how much trash disposables produce," says Evan Sorokin, MD, FACS, founder of Delaware Valley Plastic Surgery in Cherry Hill, N.J.  After we started a green initiative at our facility, we were filling our recycle dumpster well before our regular trash dumpster.  For many of us, recycling at home is easy and is almost second nature.  It does seem to take more effort in a business environment, but for us it has proven to be well worth it.

Once they began recycling, Delaware Valley Plastic Surgery center compared the cost savings of a reusable return electrode to disposables. After factoring both the cost of the initial purchase of the disposables and then the cost of paying waste management to recycle, the cost savings for using Megadyne's reusable return electrode was considerable.

Megadyne's reusable product line includes patient return electrodes, the Mega Soft® and Mega Soft Pediatric, that can eliminate in their lifecycles an average of 1,500 disposable self-adhesive pads. Its 12-time use E-Z Pen® Electrosurgical Pencil produces 1/12th the waste of standard disposable electrosurgical pencils.