A Healthy Partnership

Investing time and effort in a long term partnership is reaping rewards for St John of God Healthcare group’s Subiaco hospital.

Health care is a challenging industry at the best of times with any number of urgent issues clamouring for management attention. This makes efforts at genuine environmental leadership all the more admirable. Western Australia’s St John of God health care group, especially their major Subiaco hospital, is one such example.  Amcor Recycling’s WA branch has been working with “St John’s Subi” for more than 10 years, particularly throughout the gradual process of committing to and achieving strong environmental progress. Both organizations have learnt a great deal from the process and are now sharing this with others.

Amcor Recycling’s Annette Debenham has been working with St John’s for several years now and she says the most important thing has to be as flexible and helpful as possible. “The St John of God team is making a very genuine effort to improve their environmental performance and I see our role as making resource recovery as easy as possible for them. I have been consistently impressed by their enthusiasm and commitment so wherever we can provide advice, equipment and problem-solving, we can. I also think it has been important for us to always be open, honest and fair as St John’s have also had bad experiences with the resource recovery industry.”

St John of God Hospital Subiaco’s Environmental Officer, Mae Mallows appreciates the approach and says “Amcor has been very supportive since the beginning”. Both parties are particularly pleased with progress on the new, more wide-range recycling program established in 2003.

The major resource recovered is still cardboard, which is currently managed with a baler, but Amcor also now collects paper, office paper, newsprint, Pet and HDPE plastic bottles, glass bottles, aluminium and steel cans, milk/juice cartons, and plastic film/shrink wrap.  Amcor has provided the support materials for an extensive office-paper collection program which is working well but the major breakthrough was joint development and implementation of a co-mingled recyclables collection service. In just one year the amount of non-fibre recyclables increased by 773% (now over 4 000L worth per week).

St John of God Hospital Subiaco’s Environmental Accolades

In recent years, early efforts to engage everyone in the hospital’s environmental issues have really paid off and the hospital has made remarkable progress, which has been recognised by many and acknowledged in several awards programs.

• WA Environment Awards: joint winners in 2002, finalist in 2003 and 2004, special commendation in 2004.

• Finalists for the national Banksia Awards 2003 and 2004 and the United Nations Association of Australia World Environment Day Awards 2003.

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