Zero-Waste Hospital of Taytay, Palawan

I was invited on the anniversary of Northern Palawan Provincial Hospital in Taytay, Palawan last August 01, 2012. I was only expecting the usual games and parties that was usually done on anniversaries but I never expected that they had a game where the staff would challenge their ingenuity on creating things that would come from waste materials from the hospital. Asking questions from the staff it turns out that the goal of the Northern Palawan Provincial Hospital, other than providing good quality health services to the public, was to become a Zero-Waste Hospital.

Here’s some of my favorites on their recycling contest.

Having a recycling contest would only go as far as the end of the contest day, after that it would be going back to the usual day. But when I toured around the hospital they had a protocol on how to properly and safely dispose their garbage and reuse whatever they can.

One thing that I noticed on the hospital are the empty plastic softdrink bottle that was being filled up by plastic wrappers. This would eventually be used as a building block for planting plots in their Medicinal Garden.

They also have a Vermicomposting Facility, where some of their kitchen waste was being carried to to become healthy soil by feeding it to earthworms.

And also they have a Vegetable Garden Facility near their kitchen to grow vegetables for their kitchen.

The Medicinal Garden, Vermicomposting and Vegetable Garden Facilities are being taken care of their staff during their free time, which I really think is a great idea to relieve stress from work.

I’ve also attended a seminar they did teaching people on how to do waste management on their own homes. During the seminar a question was raised on why the hospital was teaching waste management when their job is to heal people. The answer was the responsibility of the hospital is to take care of the people’s health. People’s health are directly affected by the environment they live in. Bad environment, bad health, hello hospitalization. By giving waste management seminars they are actually curing the disease even before it happens.

Here’s a list of Northern Palawan Provincial Hospital’s Services.

And here’s their contact number of hotline number – 0927-224-5159 or 0927-224-5252.

As of now, they are developing an organic way of treating their waste water.

Click here for more photos of the entries on their Recycling Contest.