Ashfield District Council has upset at least one resident by ‘dumping’ clinical waste collections from most households.
Over the last five years, one 43 year old resident who spends nine hours on a dialysis machine every night because she suffers from kidney failure has had dialysis waste collected by the district council every week without fail – but from this week it must go in her household waste bin along with kitchen waste and non-recyclable material.
Up to 220 folk in Ashfield could be affected by the decision to reclassify certain clinical waste as safe to throw away in the general waste bin, and predictably there is widespread criticism of this decision.
“As you will understand the waste is what most people would class as bodily fluid, which I am sure anybody other than the person who it belongs to would not really like to come in contact with”, though this view, of the patient, is not shared by the council.
Edd deCoverly, Ashfield District Council service director for environment, said the decision to alter the council’s clinical waste collection service was carried out in response to a review undertaken in conjunction with Nottinghamshire County Council.
“This review included changes to where certain types of waste can be disposed of – including some types of clinical waste which can safely go into the household waste stream, rather than being collected separately as they are at present.
“This separate clinical waste collection service is currently used by around 220 people in Ashfield, all of whom received letters and/or personal visits from Council officers about the changes to the service.
“The new approach will ensure that waste is collected in the most appropriate manner in the future and we reassure the public that the council deals with all its waste legally and safely.”
Such risk-based arguments are difficult to criticise, and I wholeheartedly support them, though there are questions of waste packaging that must be considered if these wastes are not to cause aesthetic concerns and distress to others, conditions that in other circumstances play a part in waste management permitting.
So now the bulk of dialysis waste is to go to the domestic waste stream. The bloodstained contents of bags and tubes have already been poured to sewer, so the wastes comprise mainly empty bags – a few mls of fluid will remain but the volumes are small. It is logical therefore to question the implementation of this change in waste policy that reclassifies dialysis waste as domestic but non-recyclable.
Why not add dialysis waste from Hepatitis B negative Hepatitis C negative patients to other plastic recyclables? Changes to waste classification are spreading across the UK predicated on cost alone and the EA does nothing to oppose this. It is appropriate therefore to go the whole hog and recycle those plastics.
Such changes and their impact are initially modest, but in time this ripple might become irresistible as more and more of the plastic fraction of clinical waste is diverted to recycling, whether treated to render safe before recovery or considered safe for immediate processing.