From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Who knew hospital waste dumpsters were potentially full of gold and platinum?

Qld’s hospitals tackle health of patients and planet in emission reduction efforts

…

The World Health Organisation (WHO) lists climate change as the single biggest health threat facing humanity, responsible for the deaths of 13 million people annually.

In Australia, the healthcare sector accounts for 7 per cent of the nation’s total emissions and, in Queensland, nearly 50 per cent of government emissions are from the public health system, primarily driven by electricity consumption.

It is why all 16 of the state’s public health services are implementing sustainability measures, from procurement to design, recycling and energy reduction.

…

Metal recycling is one of the 42 recycling streams CHQ now has.

“We have platinum, iridium and gold wires, and silver in some of our conductive materials [used in] sleep studies, respiratory studies, and our cardiac catheterisation labs — precious metals that were going in the bin,” Ms McBrien said.

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Last year, the Prince Charles Hospital in Brisbane became the first Queensland hospital to decommission reticulated nitrous oxide anaesthetic gas.

Ms Williams said while the gas was safe and suitable for birthing and maternity, it was a potent greenhouse gas, 300 times stronger than carbon dioxide.

Prone to passive leaking, 70 per cent of the gas was being lost into the atmosphere through valves, wall outlets and hospital pipelines.

…Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-01/qld-hospitals-tackle-patients-planet-health-emission-reduction/106486828

Of course, if you are thinking of searching for precious metals in hospital waste, the downside of dumpster diving in a hospital waste is all the nasty pathogens. Which is probably why suspect items get discarded regardless of how precious they are.

As for the other items on the list, as far as I can tell most of the green measures being adopted are the kind of pointless virtue signalling we’ve come to expect.

There is one item on the list, the cutting back of anaesthetic gasses because of greenhouse gas potential, which really upsets me.

Pipeline distributed nitrous oxide is always available. Nitrous oxide is a not a particularly mobile gas like hydrogen, so the reason the pipelines are leaking is because they haven’t been properly maintained.

Cannisters seem an inferior solution, because they can run out, forcing the use of less suitable anaesthetics.

Nitrous oxide is used because it is cheap, but the focus on anaesthetic GHG potential upsets me because it seems to imply putting virtue signalling ahead of patient care.

The reason hospitals use high GHG potential anaesthetic gasses like various chloro-fluoro carbons is they work better. Chloro-fluoro carbons tend to be insoluble in water. When the medics adjust the dose, the patient’s body responds instantly to the change, because they don’t have heaps of anaesthetic gas dissolved in their bloodstream.

Not using anaesthetics to which patients’ bodies respond instantly can turn a slight miscalculation into a life threatening medical emergency – and I suspect, in the near future, the mother of all class actions, after some lawyer realises granma died because the hospital cared more about climate change than keeping her alive.