It is reported that UCL, in conjunction with its partner Mitie, has restructured its waste classification.
In what is wrongly claimed to be an industry first – Blenkharn Environmental proposed and implemented this strategy in the Isle of Man in 2010 – several central recycling strategies have been implemented together with a change to the management of laboratory clinical wastes.
Recycling strategies include internal unit delivery of supplies with removal of extraneous packaging at a central stores point. This greatly facilitates recycling and has been a central tenet of Blenkharn Environmental waste strategies for several years.
New to the plan is the reclassification of laboratory biological (clinical) wastes that have been autoclaved on-site. These are now treated and diverted to a municipal energy from waste plant.
The UCL/Mitie partnership has shown the healthcare waste industry that disposing of autoclaved laboratory wastes in this way is legal, safe, sustainable, financially beneficial and needs no investment by waste producers.
Good luck to them. Providing the autoclaves are properly certified and maintained, with proven treatment cycles and adequate capacity, these wastes must indeed go to EFW. The current practice of so many hospitals, of autoclaving all laboratory wastes and then sending it as clinical wastes for further autoclave treatment or perhaps for incineration is quite ridiculous.
If the in-house autoclave cycles are adequate, that should be it. And if not, don’t waste time, energy and money on an unproven or inadequate in-house treatment and then repeat that treatment as soon the waste leaves the laboratory. Those autoclaves, if not fit for purpose, must be upgraded or removed.
Such guidance seems beyond question and it is a failure of HTM 07 01 that it is not flagged there. Of course, it will not fit comfortably with the sometimes nonsensical ideology that is created by EA, or at least one of their number. But bad science, or simply a lack of scientific thinking, must be changed. Perhaps this new development will start a trend.
Above it all, good luck to UCL and Mitie. Ithis is a sensible, efficient and cost-effective plan that without doubt can be accomplished safely and with a positive environmental outcome.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/ucl-waste-strategy-achieves-industry-first