A crackdown by the Environment Agency, from 1 October, will target GP surgeries and similar size clinical waste producers.

Since waste treatment sites that accept clinical waste must obtain detailed information about its composition before they accept it, it requires GP practices and other producers of clinical waste to regularly provide data on the ‘quantity of waste produced; individual constituents of the waste stream; and, hazards associated with the waste’.

Failure to comply could trigger ‘enforcement action’, and waste sites may refuse to accept the clinical waste, a briefing paper by the Environment Agency warns.

The Environment Agency advice says practices may be charged a fee by their waste collector if they want them to help compile ‘pre-acceptance data’ about their waste.

The watchdog advises practices that fear they will be unable to compile the information to contact their waste collector.

http://www.healthcarerepublic.com/GP/news/1028117/Warning-collection-practices-clinical-waste/

This is sadly typical of the unacceptably bullying approach of the Environment Agency clinical waste teams and probably stems from just a single individual.

This approach is just not right, since the composition of waste from GPs is wholly predictable and unchanging year-on-year. But the EA, or perhaps just one person in the EA, wants to tick every box and has no regard for the administrative and cost burden that it will create.

Nor is there any evidence to show what difference this information will make – in reality, it will of course make no difference at all. We can but hope that in the bonfire of the quango’s, the Environment Agency will itself be shaken so hard that it starts to deliver a service that excludes this type of nonsense.