Sharps waste recycling, and indeed recycling of materials including ATT-processed plastics, latex and metals from non-sharps waste must be an environmentally sound option when compared with incineration alone.

It is interesting to read of the Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego. They have implemented an innovative sharps recycling program: recycling waste materials and utilizing the waste to manufacture new products.

http://healthcare-executive-insight.advanceweb.com/Multimedia/Photo-Gallery/Recycling-Sharps.aspx

It seems straighforward, and refreshingly no nonsense about de minimis concentrations of pharmaceutical resudies that are perhaps irrelevant and will be destroyed by the temperatures required for processing of plastics and metal recoverables.

The only downside might be the disposal of glass waste, some of which must be placed into a sharps bin for disposal. That requires an additional sharps container for glass waste comprising drug vials and ampules. That too might be processed in a recycling operation but if the two are combined though some source segregation error I forsee problems that would re.