Sponge Transition
BENEFITS
Transitioning to Fluro-Tec® Composite Sponges
Up to 25% reduction in Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, 44% reduction in water usage is based on End of Life (EOL) clinical waste disposal method 100% disinfect and landfill being used. Savings from using EOL 100% incineration is 17% and 44% respectively.
Blood-soaked Fluro-Tec® 9.5x more visible claim is based on the luminance contrast performance of Fluro-Tec® compared to a standard swab or sponge, independently verified under a control study "Multigate Fluro-Tec® Luminance Contrast Assessment", Ergonomie Pty Ltd, 04/07/2019
General disclaimer: Multigate LCA's
Lifecycle Assessment (LCA) information provided is from an internal Multigate study commissioned by Multigate and produced by Lifecycles (https://www.lifecycles.com.au). The information is protected by copyright and cannot be replicated without written permission from Multigate. These LCA results are not comparable with other LCA results unless they were created by Lifecycles using the same methodology, database reference source and version, assumptions etc. to ensure consistency in approach.
Multigate is committed to providing customers with as accurate, up-to-date LCA information on our products as possible so they can make better informed purchasing decisions. The LCA figures used in this report were generated on 7 June 2022, utilising the latest external LCA database information (ecoinvent V3.8 and AusLCI used), product data and other information available to us at the time. We intend to review and update our LCA data annually, or as required, to reflect any changes to the product, new/better information that becomes available, improvements to our LCA modelling, reference databases version updates etc. to help maintain the currency of the information presented.
SMALL CHANGE BIG IMPACT
Benefits to Australian healthcare — abdominal sponges are a frequently used surgical consumable. The cumulative environmental benefit of making this simple change at scale is not big... it's huge!
Disclaimer: Benefits to Australian healthcare section
The End of Life (EOL) used is a mix of 50% disinfect & landfill, 50% incineration. This mix attempts to reflect varying clinical waste disposal methods used by different hospitals.
* Based on an average Australian petrol passenger car that uses 11.1L/100km and travels 11,067km year (abs.gov.au 2020) and Petrol EF of 2.38 kgCO2e/L (industry.gov.au 2021), we calculate emission generated at 0.26418 kgCO2e/km travelled and 2,923.68 kgCO2e per car/per year.
# Based on Olympic swimming pool volume of 2,500,500L based on official minimum dimensions of 50m long x 25m wide by 2m deep (phinizycentre.org). Average shower = 55L. Based on a 7 minute shower using 7.857 litres per minute (mdba.gov.au).