For many Americans, spring is the unofficial Diet Season, when thousands of us resolve to lose our unhealthy, unsightly extra weight before summer arrives. Anyone who has every tried to drop those stubborn pounds, knows that the biggest challenge in slimming down isn't knowing what to do (eat less, move more) but rather how to make ourselves do it. To succeed, we have to commit to permanent lifestyle changes, not just a diet.  As a waste management consultant to the healthcare industry for the past 20 years – and a guy who's had to lose a few "spare tires" – I can tell you that the same principle applies to trimming our nation's excess weight in trash.  Getting a facility to reduce its institutional waste is a lot like getting a person to reduce their waist.  Success requires a behavioral transformation that begins first with know-how, but ultimately results in action. New action guided by better choices.

 

At Antos Environmental, my staff and I work to create this kind of behavorial transformation so that healthcare centers around the country can radically shrink the amount and cost of their waste.  Think of us as ecological fitness experts who save money while helping to save the planet. At each facility where we are contracted, Antos is the voice for the environment. In every meeting, we represent sustainability.

 

Speaking for the planet, our work begins with changing employee behavior by leading people in a consciousness-raising seminar about waste management. That's essentially a fancy term for recycling, but one that I believe enforces the essential point that we all must "manage" our measure of waste by taking responsibility for it. I also believe that there is no other 21st century business group more ethically and morally empowered to lead the cause for a cleaner environment than the healthcare industry. After all, I will say to an audience of doctors, nurses, and hospital support staff, "You spend your lives trying to heal and prevent illness. Does it make sense that you'd simultaneously contribute to a toxic planet that doesn't support good health?"  The answer seems obvious nowadays, but it wasn't always so. Before the 1990 Clean Air Act that forced change, for example, most hospitals around the country used antiquated waste incinerators that spewed toxic black smoke into the communities around them, often causing the very same respiratory ailments that the hospitals had to treat.

 

Fortunately we've gotten smarter. Many healthcare leaders and staff are now developing a more holistic view of their work, breaking down the barriers between the eco-friendly practices they keep at home but often ignore at work. When it comes to the value of recycling, they soon realize, Mother Nature doesn't care where we are. 

 

Once informed, most people in the industry quickly recognize the connection between institutional garbage and guarding public health. The next step is leading them to understand that there really is no such thing as "garbage." I like to demonstrate this by picking out the contents of a typical office wastebasket. One by one, holding up a newspaper, an empty soda can, a plastic container, a half-eaten sandwich, a paper coffee cup, and a bunch of sticky notes, I ask my audience which of these can be recycled. The answer, of course, is that all of them can be. If sorted in specific receptacles, each one of these items is a commodity that can be used in a never-ending cycle of sustainable supply and demand. All we have to do is feed it well. Just like our selves.

Tony Schifano has had over twenty years experience in the healthcare & services industries.  His primary experience is in pollution prevention, waste minimization and environmental consulting. He is the innovator of environmental awareness in the healthcare industry dating back 21 years. Tony is the Founder and President of Antos Environmental, a corporation who drives Environmental Initiatives in businesses throughout the world.