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Besides giving healthcare providers access to potentially life-saving machinery at an affordable price, refurbished medical imaging equipment also promotes eco-friendliness within the medical community. Given that the healthcare industry contributes an estimated 8 percent of carbon dioxide emissions within the United States, taking steps to reduce your practice's carbon footprint is a practical measure that can both boost your patient satisfaction and help save you some expenses in the process. These are the top four ways that buying refurbished medical imaging equipment is beneficial for the environment.
Recycling Valuable Materials
Imaging machines are complex pieces of equipment, each requiring a substantial amount of rare materials to create. Many MRI machines, for example, use liquid helium to cool their superconductor magnets, which are made with miles of coiled niobium-titanium or niobium-tin and held steady by a solid copper matrix. By refurbishing existing equipment, you can reuse those expensive components, which are thoroughly tested for functionality during refurbishment. This is the primary reason refurbishing costs so much less than buying new; it does not factor in the costs of mining, processing and installing these scarce resources.
Reducing Chemical and Carbon Emissions
Industrial manufacturing is expensive and energy-intensive, but it also produces unwelcome side-effects like chemical and carbon emissions. With global climate change reaching more and more scientific agreement, including consensus on its potentially catastrophic impact on global health, curbing greenhouse gas emissions should be a priority for all members of the healthcare industry. Chemicals released into the atmosphere or water systems can also present environmental hazards to wildlife and their human neighbors. Refurbishment therefore supports the health of both local communities and worldwide populations.
Saving Manufacturing Energy
Turning all of those raw materials into usable parts is an intensive process itself. Creating MRI components consumes approximately one-third of the total energy demand of an MRI machine, from its initial production to final disposal. Another one-third of that energy is used during transportation. By choosing refurbished equipment, you rule out these energy costs and lower the demand for the burning of fossil fuels. Although there will always be some need for new components to repair broken or degraded ones, the plastic and steel that make up most of the machine can remain serviceable for decades without issue.
Lessening the Need for Landfills
When doctor clinics and hospitals dispose of their old equipment, it often gets tossed into landfills. Landfills are unsightly, and they also account for nearly 20 percent of annual methane emissions in the United States. Since methane is about 20 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, landfills are thought to be a significant contributor to global climate change. Refurbished machines are not left to languish and decompose over the course of several centuries. Instead, they can remain productive and reliable for far longer than their original intended lifespan.
Talk to a company like Chicago C-Arms LLC for more information about using refurbished medical imaging equipment.
Share25 November 2014
