Packaging

Be Green with B. Braun: Company Shares Expertise, Environmentally Responsible Products at ASHP 2008

Monday 08. December 2008 - Waste Weight Calculation Tool Available in Booth #236

Demonstrating its commitment to environmentally responsible products and practices, B. Braun Medical Inc. (B. Braun) will present its portfolio of green products at the 43rd American Society of Health-System Pharmacists Midyear Clinical Meeting and Exhibition (ASHP), Dec. 8 – 10 in Orlando (Booth #236).

Visitors to B. Braun’s booth will have access to B. Braun’s Waste Weight Calculation Tool – an online program that allows hospitals to see how much environmental waste they could reduce by using B. Braun IV bags. The tool can be used to quantify how B. Braun’s EXCEL(R) and PAB(R) Partial Additive Bag products can reduce plastic waste compared to either Baxter’s PVC/DEHP bag (by 28%) or Hospira’s PVC/DEHP bag (by 48%). Booth visitors simply input the approximate number of IV bags their facility disposes of during the course of a year.

“B. Braun has supplied providers with environmentally responsible products for more than 30 years and continues to seek new ways of incorporating ‘green’ practices into both our products and general business practices,” said Rick Williamson, Director of Marketing for Drug Delivery for B. Braun Medical Inc. “Using our waste weight calculation tool at this year’s ASHP Midyear Meeting, attendees will see how our IV bags can help them significantly reduce their facilities’ carbon footprint.”

In fact, if every hospital in the United States had used B. Braun’s PVC-free, DEHP-free IV products in 2007, more than 46,000 tons of material could have been recycled, rather than dumped in landfills or incinerated, which releases harmful dioxins in the air.

In addition to providing the waste weight calculator and other environmental information, Central Admixture Pharmacy Services Inc. (CAPS) – a B. Braun company – is supporting a symposium titled, “Safe Labeling of IV Drug Products and the Role of Bar-Coding and Outsourcing to Enhance Patient Safety,” from 11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 8. The symposium session, being held in room W102, will focus on the requirements for clear, accurate and user-friendly product labeling to reduce the potential for medication errors with IV drug products and infusions. Guidelines developed by The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) for the design of labels applied to IV drugs and infusions will also be presented.