For more than thirty years the HUG have set up the infrastructure to encourage sorting and recycling, and regularly carry out awareness-raising activities.
Hospital activities generated over 5,200 tonnes of waste in 2024. . Aware of this, the institution is working to increase recycling and reduce waste production as much as possible, particularly through the eco-points set up since 2013 and the increase in recycling channels. Various waste reduction projects are implemented each year. In 2022, for example, the elimination of plastic bed covers saved than 8,500 kg of plastic.
Since 2022, at the subaquatic and hyperbaric medicine department, the plastic tubes necessary for hyperbaric therapies are no longer discarded and replaced daily. This change in practice has saved 105 kg of plastic in just two months.
In 2024, the Skills Development Center, in collaboration with the Cleaning and Hygiene Service, created a serious-game training course. This fun training program teaches and reinforces the right reflexes for sorting waste and disposing of medical waste safely. More than 715 people have been trained to date, and the initiative won public recognition at the 25th HUG Quality Day.
In addition to these actions, the HUG also fight against food waste.
Actions initiated in previous years, such as the installation of automated medicine cabinets in the care units and the potential for improving the redistribution of medicines, continue to bear fruit. In 2024, the tonnage of waste collected in medical waste has decreased (from 396 tonnes in 2023 to 361 tonnes in 2024), with the corollary of an increase in the amount of waste incinerated, raising the waste recycling rate to 46%.