Beds recycled from Capital & Coast District Health Board are loaded into a container for shipping to Pakistan, through the charity Take My Hands.

Amputees in Pakistan and patients in the Solomon Islands may soon be sitting on Wellington beds.

Fifty-one working hydraulic and electric beds, which have reached the end of their usable life for Capital & Coast District Health Board (CCDHB), have been diverted from landfill to Kiwi charity Take My Hands.

The group collects usable medical equipment and resources that can no longer be used in New Zealand and redistributes them to organisations that work with those in need in the Asia Pacific Region.

SUPPLIED/CCDHB Capital & Coast District Health Board contractor Rick Kraus, helps to load recycled beds onto a container for shipping to Pakistan.

A container packed with 25 of the beds, 36 meal trolleys and two drip poles headed off last weekend, destined for the Hope Rehabilitation Society in Lahore, which specialises in artificial limbs, Take My Hands managing trustee Janette Searle said.

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It's likely the rest will end up in the Solomon Islands, where beds of any kind are in short supply, Searle said.

SUPPLIED/CCDHB Kenny McCaul, Capital & Coast DHB contracts manager, says the DHB sent 51 beds to Pakistan as part of a mission to reduce hospital equipment going to landfill.

"Some health clinics just don't have beds. They have patients on the floor. In paediatric departments there are women who have just given birth who were in blankets on the floor.

"It's not about shoddy equipment it's that there's no equipment," Searle said.

CCDHB contracts manager Kenny McCaul​ said the move was part of the hospital's new waste minimisation policy, which came out of a waste audit conducted last year.

"We decided the traditional way of disposing of these beds wasn't going to suit the way we wanted to operate as a DHB any more."

Most of these beds have a shelf life of about 10 years, then it becomes too hard to get parts, McCaul said.

"They were past the age where they could operate in a hospital environment."

They were all in a working state when donated, which Searle said was important.

"We don't want our junk just to end up in thier landfills. It's important to send stuff that's easy to maintain or they can get parts."

On top of the donation to Take My Hands, the DHB had also sent beds to propmakers and the Wellington Menzshed, where they were used as portable workstations, he said.

"You can get them to a decent height to be able to lean over a project and raise it up, so you're not having to reach in the middle of something."

Some would have arrived with the regional hospital in 2008, while some were even older, McCaul said.

Searle said Take My Hands, officially established in 2012, was made possible through the use of small contributions of transport and logistics companies and DHBs that no longer needed medical equipment.

"It's when small contributions that make sense come together."

Anyone who wants to help Take My Hands, can visit onepercentcollective.org/take-my-hands.