INSIDE FOODSERVICE Hospital and healthcare sector leading the way in sustainability initiatives in the kitchen and beyond

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International research shows consumers are taking your commitment to sustainability into account more and more when deciding to dine in or order out. A 2023 study conducted by the Sustainable Restaurant Association found more than 80 per cent of diners consider sustainability as a deciding factor when selecting a dining venue, while a similar report from UKHospitality showed 80 per cent of people expect a hospitality brand to demonstrate sustainable practice and that 41 per cent were willing to pay more for sustainable dining. Closer to home, a survey by IBIS World showed 87 per cent of Australians are concerned about environmental issues and sustainability.

It's no wonder then that foodservice operations are investing heavily in sustainable practices, and this is particularly the case in the hospital/healthcare sector, where foodservice not only makes an important contribution to the ongoing health and nutrition of patients, it’s also a key component within a broader sustainability strategy embracing the entire operation.

To learn more about how sustainability and waste reduction strategies are being implemented in hospital kitchens and how they tie in with the overall commitment to building greater sustainability into the healthcare system, we spoke to Renae McBrien, Clinical Lead for Environmental Sustainability at Children’s Health Queensland.

Reducing the impact on our planet

Renae has worked in sustainability in healthcare for some nine years across various hospitals and roles and was awarded the 2019 and 2020 Brisbane City Council Waste Innovation Award and the 2021 Brisbane City Council Waste Champion Award. She is currently based at Queensland Children’s Hospital Brisbane, whose sustainability strategy won the 2022 Queensland Critical Excellence Award and was a finalist for the 2022 Queensland Premiers Award.

“What we are trying to do in a broad sense is reduce the impact that healthcare has on our planet, and it’s never just in one area that we try to tackle environmental impact – it’s what we use and how we use it, and that includes food, water, energy, waste, transport and resilience so it’s a huge portfolio,” Renae explains. “As one example, healthcare contributes about seven per cent of our national carbon footprint, so we’re trying to reduce that.

Leftover bananas are repurposed into banana bread

“In foodservice terms, we’re highly focused on waste reduction and generating more sustainability in our kitchens. We do an annual patient satisfaction survey to understand whether the food we produce is being eaten and if not, why not. For example, we used to serve lamingtons on the menu but we saw that 67 per cent of them weren’t being eaten. We also saw that our bananas weren’t being consumed and were going brown and spotty. So our chef and production team in the kitchen decided to take the lamingtons off the menu and replace them with fresh banana bread made with our own bananas, and that now goes out for afternoon tea. We know it’s being eaten and the surveys show improved patient satisfaction as a result.

“In foodservice terms, we’re highly focused on waste reduction and generating more sustainability in our kitchens”

— Renae McBrien

“It’s a question of seeing what’s working and what’s not and then adapting so that we can always provide sustainable, nutritious food for our patients who are growing children. We operate a working pediatric kitchen offering therapeutic meals - around 26,000 per month which comes to more than 300,000 per year - using a service delivery system where we have a kitchen space off every ward. I work very closely with our chef, Kim Adams, who is herself a leader in sustainability. Kim and her team recycle every single piece of soft plastic, all their hard plastic, all their cardboard, all food resources, and her leadership is crucial to the success of our program. In a busy kitchen environment you can’t have food bins everywhere so Kim has ensured they are strategically placed to capture waste.”

While food waste from leftover ingredients and spoilage is relatively easy to capture in the kitchen, the hospital has also instituted a strategy to ensure all organic waste is diverted from landfill into composting. This is achieved thanks to the hospital’s catering assistants being equipped with red buckets in which they capture all the plate waste from leftover meals.  

“Bringing the catering assistants in to help in making a difference helps generate a positive culture change,” Renae points out. “All the food waste from each plate is scraped out and it goes into one central bin – obviously there are odour and hygiene concerns when you’re moving and storing food waste, so we use a central collection point. All that organic food waste is then sent to our organic waste contractor to be turned into commercial landscape supplies. This process has captured about 21,000kg of food waste per year, in fact about 85 per cent of all the food waste generated in the hospital, which would otherwise have gone to landfill.”

Repurposing non-perishable food

Renae has also put in place a system whereby non-perishable food which goes out to children on the ward and hasn’t been opened and used is repurposed for the OzHarvest Food Rescue Program. “If, for example a packet of Coco Pops has gone to a non-infectious child on the ward and it hasn’t been opened, we’re able to capture that product and send it on. Similarly, any fruit which is on the spoiled side goes into the fridge or freezer and is sent on to OzHarvest. Last year we rescued 561kg of food in this manner.”

Another pressing concern is the elimination of single use plastic packaging, in line with the Australian Government’s target of making all packaging recyclable, compostable or reusable by 2025. “The kitchen captures a huge amount, from product packaging down to shrinkwrapping and pallet wrap, and there’s also a lot of single use plastic in a hospital environment generally. Whenever a nurse is opening a syringe or anything which is kept sterile, there’s a clear plastic wrap around it.

“We capture all that clear plastic into one transparent bag at each patient bedside and it’s tied off so it's safe but checkable by a human before being baled. Plastic which is sterile is actually in demand by the recycling market so we keep it separate rather than commingling it with the rest of our plastic waste.”

“Bringing the catering assistants in to help in making a difference helps generate a positive culture change”

Working with Containers for Change

Renae and her team also work collaboratively with Queensland’s container refund scheme Containers for Change. “We collect about beverage 9000 containers a month – predominantly plastic drink bottles, soft drink cans and so on – mostly from our public retail areas such as cafes and food outlets, as well as our staff tea rooms.

“Those are all sent through to Commmunity Co Recycling at Coorparoo and we’re able to take the revenue this generates and invest it back into the Children’s Hospital Foundation as well as with our own Green Team. We’ve used some of that money to support charities, and our Green Team members have also invested in recycling of blister packs for medication dispensing – we’re the first Queensland hospital to have done this.”

Reducing recyclable waste

Another sustainability initiative is to reduce the amount of paper and cardboard being used internally while identifying recycling opportunities for what is currently used. “In one year we were able to reduce our paper usage by 2.35 million A4 sheets, so we’re definitely getting the runs on the board which is great. We have so much packaging in healthcare generally and we get deliveries several times a day, so as well as having a compactor on side we’ve set up a free box program for staff to assist in moving house, which is an initiative that anyone can set up in their business. 

“We take the really sturdy boxes and save the bubblewrap from packaging and we stack them up for staff to use. On average we would help five staff members a week with their moves – it costs us nothing and it’s recirculating resources. It’s rewarding, it's simple and it’s about giving back to the staff and encouraging a culture of recycling and thinking sustainably.

“It’s rewarding, it’s simple and it’s about giving back to the staff and encouraging a culture of recycling and thinking sustainably”

“One of the other programs we’ve put in place over the last year, which is a gamechanger, is designed to assist not just in reducing waste but preventing it. Everything in healthcare has an expiration date, so we’ve instituted a medical market day whereby we review the expiry dates on all our consumables and gather up everything that’s nearby its expiry and have a swap meet so all the different cost centres in the hospital can come together and take what they need from what’s available. 

“For example, rather than having syringes sitting on a trolley that are never going to be used, we can move them to elsewhere where they’re needed. The swap meet, again, is a simple idea but has been tremendously successful in that last year it saved us more than $900,000 by facilitating better stock rotation. The staff love being part of it so much that when they know a market day is going to be on they swap shifts so they can attend!”