From: Ian
Category: News & information
Date: 23 Jul 2009
Time: 11:29:23 +0200
Remote Name: 86.133.22.11
"The innovative director of Vietnam's Thoi Lai District Hospital wants to enter a new invention he is working on 'to turn glass medical waste into concrete pavement' into a competition next year.
"One day he put several glass drug containers into his meat grinder, and ground them into fine pieces. He then bought materials and asked local engineers to make a larger machine the same as the grinder.
"He said he then mixed the finely-ground glass with cement and powdered lime and poured the mix into a paving stone mould, adding that the finished stone was very hard.
"At the end of last year, after testing to see if the paving stones worked and were safe, the doctor asked his hospital to sort its waste into different categories every day, and store all the glass.
http://www.lookatvietnam.com/2009/07/doctor-turns-glass-medical-waste-into-paving-stones.html
Of course, in some jurisdictions, there would be an almost complete prohibition of such approaches due to [generally unfounded] concerns of pharmaceutical residues. But the idea is a sound one, though it is difficulty to see why the glass waste is not segregated and mixed with glass waste from all other sources.