Healthcare Plastics Recycling Council hosts workshop

The Healthcare Plastics Recycling Council (HPRC), St. Paul, Minnesota, convened a workshop today in Oxford, England, with the intention of beginning dialogue on how circular economy thinking could apply to health care plastics in the European Union, enabling more recycling and reuse opportunities and reducing negative environmental impacts. The workshop, sponsored by Baxter, BD, Johnson & Johnson and SABIC, included key stakeholders and thought leaders from Aarhus University, Amcor, Ellen MacArthur Foundation, EUROPEN (European Association for Packaging and the Environment), National Health Service and Plastics Europe.

“Given Europe’s Strategy 2020 goals and ambitions towards a circular economy, HPRC has a unique opportunity to demonstrate leadership in the healthcare plastic and packaging space,” says Tod Christenson, executive director of HPRC. “By initiating discussions with European stakeholders, we hope to identify and evaluate meaningful activities where HPRC can help drive circular solutions, ensuring that resources are used in a more sustainable way.”

Founded in 2010, HPRC engages with manufacturers, hospitals and recyclers to enable safe and effective recycling solutions for plastic products and packaging used in the delivery of health care. Recent work includes product and packaging design guidelines, a how-to recycling toolbox for hospitals, resin testing of the technical limitations in plastics reprocessing and a multistakeholder plastic recycling project in Chicago.

“HPRC was founded on the concept that healthcare plastics recycling solutions require a complete value chain approach,” Christenson says. “We hope this workshop is the first of many opportunities to extend our work in Europe and be a model of industry collaboration.”

After the workshop, HPRC members met to begin developing an action plan based on the ideas and discussion from the previous day that represent the most viable opportunities to advance healthcare plastics recycling in Europe. Additional information will be shared on the HPRC website as specific projects are scoped and initiated.

HPRC describes itself as a private technical coalition of industry peers across health care, recycling and waste management industries seeking to improve recyclability of plastic products within health care. HPRC members include Baxter, BD, Cardinal Health, DuPont, Eastman Chemical Co., Halyard Health, Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic, Ravago Manufacturing Americas and SABIC Innovative Plastics. The council convenes biannually at meetings hosted by an HPRC member that include facility tours to further learning and knowledge sharing opportunities through first-hand demonstration of best practices in sustainable product and packaging design and recycling processes.