Healthcare Waste

Healthcare waste is often generically described as clinical waste, but are you aware of the difference?

 There are specific rules and categorisations that are dependent on the type of healthcare waste that is collected, and contrary to popular opinion, it is not all classed as hazardous waste.

The most common form of healthcare was is feminine hygiene waste and most toilets in commercial locations will have separate bins for dealing with this. This is classed as non-hazardous ‘offensive’ waste and can therefore be collected without consignment notes and can disposed of to landfill. Likewise, wastes from low-level healthcare activities – company medical rooms, non-surgical treatment rooms – can generally be classified under the same description. These wastes would often be collected in what are called ‘tiger bags’ – yellow plastic bags with a black stripe – and could contain silicon gloves, non-blood stained swabs etc. None of these would so far be classed as ‘Clinical Waste’ under Department of Health guidelines. This also includes vomit and other bodily fluid waste. Unless there is a risk the person might be infectious, these wastes are not classed as hazardous.

The next type of healthcare waste up the chain would be low level medicines. These are classed as Clinical waste and require special disposal, but again, they are not classed as hazardous waste.

Finally, you get into the types of wastes that not only require collection as hazardous waste, but also require special disposal. This includes potentially infectious waste such as blood stained swabs from medical facilities (although not if the person is known to be infection free), sharps etc. Other than sharps, most infectious waste should be collected in orange bags or yellow bags if infected with medicines or chemicals. Orange bags have to go for incineration or alternative treatments – such as sterilisation – whilst yellow bags and sharps should be disposed of through high temperature incineration.

Of course, as with any other waste producer, healthcare establishments should be complying with the waste hierarchy requirements to maximise recycling and should therefore be ensuring that packaging, paper etc is collected separately.

So, if your premises produces waste that contains body fluids, do not automatically assume – or believe if you are told – that they are hazardous waste. For the vast majority of sites, these wastes do not need to be collected using consignment notes, but should just be collected as offensive, non-hazardous waste.