Planning your Health and Social Care recycling needs
How to conduct a waste audit in Health and Social Care settings
A waste audit is a hands-on review of the different types of waste your organisation produces. It can be conducted at a high level, for example reviewing all waste for your organisation, or at a more detailed level, for example reviewing waste per site. For guidance to organisations identify, measure, and reduce food waste specifically, visit www.guardiansof.grub.com.
The idea of a waste audit is to identify where waste is generated in your organisation. With this knowledge, you can take steps to reduce it and ensure your workplace complies with legislation concerning waste handling, storage and disposal.
Undertaking a waste audit will help you to establish:
What types of waste your organisation produces
How much waste your organisation produces
Where waste is generated in your organisation – in terms of all forms of municipal type waste
Who generates waste in your organisation (staff members? Patients?)
To Understand what to include in your tender specification for a waste service contract
Once complete, you can then develop a waste action plan with your priorities and targets for reusing, recycling and recovering your waste. Alternatively use this simple template to get you started on reducing, redistributing and recycling.
Good to know
Your existing waste or recycling , if you have one, may be better placed to undertake the audit process for you – especially if your waste may include items that could cause an injury, such as clinical waste (sharps) and potentially from the health and social care sector.
There are a number of options to carrying out a waste audit – the one you choose will depend on a number of things such as how much time you have to conduct the waste audit.
This section provides two standard methods for conducting a waste audit:
Standard Waste Audit - which looks in-depth at the waste produced across your site or a specific area of it, and
Visual Bin Audit – which is a light touch approach with minimal to no waste sorting.
Standard Waste Audit
To conduct your waste audit, start by downloading the Waste Audit template.
You will need:
A tarpaulin or plastic sheet to tip waste out onto for sorting
Appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) as identified via a risk assessment (to protect you and your clothes)
Containers for sorting the waste into
Weighing equipment
A pen to record your findings
Your waste audit template
1. Conduct a risk assessment
You should produce a risk assessment before undertaking a waste audit to ensure that you’ve considered and mitigated all risks, such as those entailed by manual handling. Ensure that all relevant colleagues are properly briefed on the task before starting the audit, including your Health & Safety officer or team. The Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland has some useful information and resources on conducting office-based risk assessments and an example template that can be downloaded from the HSE for NI website.
Additional care should be taken if your waste is likely to contain sharps, clinical waste or potentially
2. Collect your waste
Gather your waste, including general waste, all recyclables, kitchen waste and waste from litterbins, if applicable. Where installed and used, food waste macerators should be turned off and the food waste collected in a suitable container to enable it to be weighed.
3. Sorting
If not already segregated, tip the waste onto your tarpaulin or plastic sheet and sort it into the different material types using your sorting containers. Use the waste audit template as a guide when deciding the number of different material types.
4. Measuring
Weigh each type of waste, remembering to deduct the weight of the container to arrive at the net weight of the material.
5. Recording
Record the date, time and location of your audit and the weights of each material on your form.
6. Repeat twice
Where possible, it’s a good idea to repeat the audit (steps 2-5) twice more (three times altogether) during a week, taking account of known busy and quieter days and average your totals. This will provide a more accurate picture of the types and quantities of waste and recycling your business produces.
7. Calculate your results
Using the average net weight for each material stream, calculate your annual waste and recycling total. Calculate your annual waste production, for example by multiplying by 52 if you have measured by the week.
Tips for carrying out your waste audit
Choose the right location and date(s) for your audit – the best time to undertake it will be the day before your waste is collected
Secure a suitable area for opening waste sacks and containers and sorting the waste materials
Keep your audit dates secret so that employees/patients/visitors won’t change their behaviour and skew your results, but make sure that cleaners and facilities staff know so they don’t empty the bins.