Advertising flimflam is usually quite obvious. Bold and exaggerated claims and highly selective quotes clipped out of context are usually easy to spot. The law says much about the use of spurious advertising claims, and quite rightly so; such cases should be infrequent, if not rare. However, we should take all advertising claims with caution.

“Caveat emptor” or ‘Let the buyer beware’ is an essential maxim, but how does this affect us on the Clinical Waste Discussion Forum?

The current (August 2011) volume of Inside Hospitals carries a half page piece entitled ‘Segregate and Save’ advertising the Wybone duo sack holder. This duo sack holder is a great idea, though I remain concerned about the quality of segregation when two bins are so close together.

Inevitably, errors in segregation will be made and though we generally concern ourselves with the high costs of inappropriate wastes entering the clinical waste stream, the potential hazards associated with errors that place clinical waste items or confidential paper waste into a black sack should be the primary concern. Too often however, the latter is simply ignored as excitement abounds over the perceived cash savings through reduction in clinical waste volumes.

The claims made in the piece for the Wybone duo sack holder suggest some considerable savings, of a massive “£81,000 saving in a year by sending less clinical waste to the incinerator”. Great stuff, but at what cost? That cost is not fiscal, but associated with the more important segregation but hidden errors that place clinical and other hazardous or confidential wastes into the domestic waste stream.

Reducing costs of clinical waste disposal by such a substantial amount is a considerable and welcome gain. However, when waste audits considers the other side of the coin too and look at segregation errors from the perspective of personal and environmental safety and regulatory compliance, then I will breathe a little more easily.