Successive audits by Blenkharn Environmental of clinical and related wastes from domiciliary producers have identified many problems in performance and information management, as well as the more general support to communities and those individuals receiving care in their own homes.

Today we found a new one, from the London borough of Lambeth. Content to permit some fractions of clinical waste to go into the black bag domestic waste stream, and giving some examples to facilitate segregation, the Council turn the clock back by several decades or more, categorising wastes as contagious or non-contagious!

Prompting thoughts, not memories, of Victorian London, of poverty and disease in the pre-antibiotic era when diphtheria, TB and other infections were rife and spread among the community almost unchecked, contagion is a term that has fallen out of widespread use. Except perhaps in Lambeth

http://www.lambeth.gov.uk/rubbish-and-recycling/get-rid-of-healthcare-waste