Daisy Ware's Blog

Waste disposal of single use items is nothing new; it has been around for a long time.  However we must be cognizant of how much of this we are using, and how much is necessary.  Single use plastic cups are a convenience rather than a necessity.  Necessities are things like needles and syringes and other medical supplies.

Check out this article from 1984:

As the use of disposable products becomes more widespread in hospitals, managers must adopt safe, effective, and cost-efficient ways to dispose of the resulting infectious wastes in compliance with requirements set by regulatory bodies and the states. With the increase in plastics technology and the economy of disposable products, their use has skyrocketed over the past decade. Many hospitals report that the majority of the products they use are disposable, and over half these products are made of plastic.

The majority of disposable products are exposed to infection. Common methods of infectious waste disposal, including landfill dumping and incineration, have failed to meet complete disposal requirements and are coming under close scrutiny by regulatory bodies.

Hospitals are under a “tremendous amount of pressure to be aware of the implications” of actions taken by regulatory bodies and the states, says David Lasiter, president of Medical Safe TEC, Inc., Indianapolis. Legitimately, hospitals are alarmed by the exhorbitant financial costs for waste clean-up and the potential liability for landfill waste dumping, he says.

International Safway Systems, Inc., a company acquired by Medical Safe TEC, Inc., decided to tacke the problem of total infectious hospital waste disposal. In meetings with hospital administrators across the country, it was apparent “that an infectious waste management system that incorporates the collection of waste, its safe transportation within the hospital, total destruction, decontamination, and safe disposal” was needed, says Lasiter. Requirements developed by International Safway Systems in cooperation with several hospital administrators include:

* System must be capable of handling infectious waste found in the hospital.

* Debris from disposables must be safe for handling.

* Debris from disposables must be aseptic and acceptable for normal landfill dumping.

* Unit must use a wet-process decontaminator to eliminate internal cleaning and odors.

* The effluent used must be acceptable for introduction into a standard sewage system as it is flushed out.

* Unit must be large enough to handle in one hour all infected waste a hospital generates in a full day of operation.

* Unit must have a noise level acceptable to hospital environment.

* Unit must address the collection risks of bedside containers.

* Unit must address the exchange of new and used bedside containers.

* Unit must have lockable carts for safe transportation.

The system designed by company engineers for hospital use incorporates high-impact plastic receptacles, stainless steel-walled nursing carts, and a destruction and decontamination unit that quickly pulverizes all materials into granular debris while bathing it in a decontamination solution. The debris is then transferred to containers, ready for sanitary landfill disposal. Tests have shown that the system eliminates all the waste in a 500-bed hospital in less than an hour each day. In comparison, incineration of the same waste requires a minimum of eight hours and can approach 24 hours.

“After disposal of one day’s waste, the total waste of a 500-bed hospital is reduced in size to fit in a 50-gallon container,” Lasiter says. “More importantly, the debris is totally safe, in that all glass and plastic items are pulverized, the needles broken, blunted and safe from infection, and ready for sanitary landfill dumping.”

Adams, Scott. “System tackles infectious waste problem.” Hospitals, Journal of American Hospital Association 1 Jan. 1984