Charles Kraft, R.N., a Senior Consultant at Cardinal Health, shares practical approaches for identifying efficiencies and savings opportunities in your hazardous waste container program. Kraft highlights straightforward, cost-saving moves including smarter container choices, tighter formularies and addressing often-overlooked factors like placement and compliance.
Consider sizing up to reduce spend and increase efficiency
When advising customers on container selection, Kraft begins with one “golden rule” — select the largest container suited to the task. It’s easy to overlook that with containers, the cost per gallon of capacity often drops as container size increases. For example, when stepping up in-room sharps containers from a common five-quart configuration to a three-gallon, Kraft typically sees the per-gallon cost reduce by 7% to 12%, with only a modest increase in footprint. In high-volume areas, choosing an 18-gallon over an 8-gallon option might yield 3% to 7% savings, making a strong case for sizing up whenever possible.
Smarter sizing can also promote operational efficiency by reducing the time staff spend exchanging full containers, freeing staff up for higher-priority tasks. In a small facility with 130 locations using five-quart containers changed twice a week, upgrading to three-gallon containers would reduce the number of exchanges from more than 13,000 per year to roughly 5,600. Assuming three minutes per exchange, that’s a time savings of nearly 400 labor hours annually.
Sweep the corners to leverage best pricing
Before implementing a container program, Kraft analyzes customers’ usage reports to identify all container categories and configurations, ensuring they qualify for optimal pricing. In the case of multipurpose sharps containers, usually popular in labs, low or no usage tells Kraft they might be sourcing elsewhere. The same goes for pharmaceutical or hazardous waste containers. Since pricing is volume-driven, it makes sense to sweep every department to capture and aggregate container usage.
Monitor waste streams through audits
Audit-focused waste stream monitoring is invaluable for controlling disposal costs, given the wide variation in pricing across waste categories. Routine audits can spot when containers aren’t used correctly, preventing costly errors like food waste in sharps bins or non-hazardous drug vials in a hazardous waste container. Large containers placed near sinks often become de facto trash cans, which is why Kraft avoids placing them there whenever possible. Audits also spotlight units where targeted waste stream training is needed and reveal beneficial container placements, helping to rein in unnecessary disposal expenses.
Adopt a SKU reduction formulary
Some may view SKU reduction as a low-impact strategy, but customers who have streamlined their container selections often experience operational benefits. Containers may come in various sizes, colors, lid types and many facilities stock redundant options. Using a SKU reduction approach, hospitals carrying 30 or more unique container SKUs can accomplish the job with 10 or 11. In Kraft’s experience, cutting back to a tighter selection tends to make day-to-day management more straightforward and helps avoid simple mix-ups.
For more information about Cardinal Health Sharps Safety Solutions, visit cardinalhealth.com/sharpsafety.
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