ANMF (Vic Branch)

Following Maggie Beer, dietitian Dr Jorja Collins gave an illuminating talk about improving both food, and food waste, in our hospitals – although she was nervous speaking immediately after the beloved food icon.

Among the shocking statistics Jorja presented were that food waste, if it were a country, would be the third biggest greenhouse gas emitter, behind the US and China. It contributes up to 50 per cent of total healthcare waste by weight in some hospitals, but hospitals and healthcare are not part of Australia’s national strategy to halve food waste by 2030.

In an interactive talk, Jorja addressed the complexities of the issue, and offered some surprisingly simple solutions – such as getting rid of paper menus. An electronic bedside meal-ordering system, now common in the US, reduces the lag time between ordering and eating, which helps reduce food waste.

Jorja also revealed the results of a pilot study she and her colleagues conducted, in which they collected around 1,500 non-perishable food items in un-opened packages per day, in one hospital. They tested all these items and found they were microbiologically safe to re-use. But typically, these items end up in the bin.

‘There are many things that nurses and midwives can do in your day-to-day practice to avoid food waste in the first place,’ she said. Some examples given included:

• Enter diet code information and make changes promptly and correctly.
• Make sure you understand how to use the menu-management system so that the information going down to the kitchen is accurate and timely.
• If a patient is on a food chart, report food intake back to the dietitian (if you can find them) so that the plan can be adapted.
• Give meds, especially anti-nausea meds, before meals.
• Importantly, don’t talk badly about the food in front of patients, especially if you haven’t tasted it yourself.

Single-use plastics ban

Following lunch, the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation sustainability manager Jayne Paramour updated attendees on developments in driving a circular economy for packaging, before graduate nurse and former ecologist Lucinda Gibson spoke on the interconnectedness between biodiversity and health.

Then it was time to address the upcoming single-use plastics ban in Victoria, with panellists Amanda Elliott from the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, Ben Mouat from the Climate and Health Alliance (CAHA), and Stephanie Hughes from South West Healthcare Victoria.

Amanda laid out the reasons for the ban – which comes into effect state-wide in February 2023, and encompasses drinking straws, cutlery, plates, swizzle sticks, expanded polystyrene food and drink containers, and cotton-bud sticks – and put it in context as part of the Andrews Labor Government’s bigger reform agenda to improve the waste and recycling sector in Victoria.

She also reiterated the healthcare exemptions: drinking straws for disability or medical reasons, and cotton buds for testing in scientific, medical, forensic or law enforcement purposes.

Ben shared news of CAHA’s pilot project to create a fact sheet and webpage to assist those wanting to reduce single-use plastics in healthcare settings. You can find details at caha.org.au/reducing_sup_in_health.

Stephanie, a registered nurse and clinical products adviser, shared with the audience the remarkable achievements her hospital has made in replacing single-use plastics with compostable alternatives. The key takeaways are twofold:

• they have now replaced all of their drinking straws, cutlery, plates, stirrers, polystyrene cups and almost all of their 30ml and 60ml pill cups, kidney dishes, injection trays (and their packaging) with compostable alternatives
• and they have saved money doing it – just replacing the pill cups saved them $60,000 alone.

‘We’ve proved that this can be done,’ Stephanie told the audience to hearty applause.

Terracycle’s Ben Elvy – presenting remotely, due to COVID – closed proceedings with an overview of Terracycle’s mission to eliminate the idea of waste.