Beacon Converters, Inc.
& Recycle Runway’s, Nancy Judd
Bella the Bride
Bella the Bride represents the beauty found through sustainable practices. Beacon Converters, Inc. commissioned the dress designed by artist and environmental educator Nancy Judd. The dress joins a collection of couture fashion upcycled from “trash”. The dress personifies the importance of recycling discarded waste, specifically healthcare packaging, which could otherwise be sent to landfill.
Bella’s pure white gown is pieced and sewn out of discarded Tyvek®, a clean, flexible, white plastic, sterilizable material, widely used in medical device packaging. Tyvek® was selected because of its ability to be recycled or recovered for repurposing. The name Bella was chosen to honor the wife of William Francis Daly, the founder of Beacon Converters and her structure personifies a message that promotes the reduction of healthcare packaging waste to landfill.
The train of the wedding gown is covered with more than 400 flowers, which also are made from discarded Tyvek®, a high-density polyethylene (HDPE) material that is a sterile barrier protection used for medical devices and supplies. Flower making workshops and complimentary flower crafting templates inspired others to participate in the creation of the flowers that were used on the train, as well as those used for the bouquets dedicated to Bella’s tour. Handcrafted flowers were donated by healthcare industry professionals from hospitals, manufacturers and educational institutions across the United States.
at the Medical Design & Manufacturing (MD&M) East Expo and Conference in New York City.
Connect With Bella!
The Challenge
- Healthcare is 17% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and expected to grow to 20% by 2020
- As an industry it is one of the top generators of waste, equating to over 5.2 million tons annually
- In a hospital setting, the OR can generate between 20-30% of the facility’s waste
Learn more about how to Green the OR from Practice GreenHealth
