Fresenius on its website https://www.fresenius.com/ boasts of their devotion to Sustainability. Turns out that I taught Sustainability to MBA students at Purdue University’s Krannert School of Business so I know a little bit about this subject.
Cutting to the chase, in review, Fresenius recently reduced the drain line and patient line on the disposable cassette used daily in our peritoneal dialysis treatment to 15 feet from 20 feet. Seems that many of us can no longer reach the toilet with this new, shorter version. Fresenius may have shortened these leads as a business decision to save money or even generate less waste.
But wait here. Let’s look at this more closely. Consider only the drain side. With the drain line reduced to 15 feet, I now have to order the additional 20-foot drain extension to reach our closest toilet to drain. So now instead of a 20-foot drain line, I have a 15-foot (new drain length) plus 20-foot (extension) for a total of 35 feet for the new setup. So I am putting in the trash (35-20)/20 -> 75% more waste from the drain line alone. This is somewhat compensated by the shorted patient line, being five feet shorter, so considering this too, 25% more waste is being generated. (20+20 original, 15+15+20 now -> 50 – 40 over 40 = 25 %)
So tell me, how is this being environmentally sound and a good sustainability practice?
All of us using the Fresenius-provided Liberty Cycler know it is prone to drain alarms. I remember enough of my junior-level fluid dynamics class at Purdue when I was an engineering student to know that adding drain line length requires more ump from the Cycler to push fluid out which it is already lacking. Adding essentially 15 feet of drain line can only exacerbate Cycler performance. To alleviate this situation as much as possible, I have been cutting about five feet off the drain extension and using this as the extension, giving me 20 feet again, to reach our drain toilet. The lead photo is the excess waste tubing now going to the landfill as a result of the decision by Fresenius to decrease line length. Aren’t they just brilliant?
Leave a Reply