Recycling sharps waste?

Recycling sharps waste is on its way.

While the phoney way between single-use and resusable sharps container services rumbles on with claim and counter-claim about teh potential CO2 savings and overall environmental benefit, BD are making substantial claims about plastics recovery from sharps waste.

With a major syringe and needle manufacturer also manufacturing sharps containers one can be sure that the recycled waste will be of high purity – subject only to coincidental contamination with odds and sods tossed inappropriately into teh sharps bin, and metals that can be removed with ease. It is therefore entirely expected that they should support teh disposable option with a bolt-on recycling and resource recovery option.

It has been tried before, including one short-lived field operation in the UK, and is generally highly successful. It requires, of course, an ATT waste processing operaton and there is the stimbling block. EA and others have been ideologically opposed to ATT processing of sharps bins for reasons never properly explained but nonetheless robustly, even aggressively, defended.

I predict that will change. With the benefit of massive resources and political power, BD and its partners are likely to succeed and satisfy the US authorities to put this into widespread operation, no doubt competing head-to-head with teh re-usable option. That alone should be fun to watch, and more so when they eye the UK and eurpoean markets. I have no doubt that they will succeed, and that those regulatory barriers will be swept away.

 

http://earth911.com/news/2011/10/26/saving-sharps-saving-money-recycling-medical-waste/

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