With the healthcare industry accounting for 8% of the nation's carbon footprint, some medical device companies are absorbed in waste-reducing initiatives — but hurdles await, The New York Times reported Feb. 26.
A majority of this waste is from home devices, such as respiratory equipment and oxygen masks, which weren't made to be dismantled and recycled. Most medical products are currently unfit for usual recycling processes because of their unusual size, non-sterility and complex designs.
Alongside the millions of dollars' worth of personal protective equipment being dumped, insulin pens and inhalers are the two medical items with the most complications for environmental sustainability efforts.
Medical suppliers are investing more in recyclable items, decreasing the amount of plastic in their devices and packaging, and redesigning products that aren't petroleum-based, according to the Times. Other healthcare companies are also working to decrease their medical waste outputs, from Walmart and Novo Nordisk to Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente and New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell Health.
One company, Triumvirate Environmental, receives waste from hospitals and pharmaceutical companies and repurposes it. Its $70 million plant in Jeannette, Pa., has been in operation for about a decade.
Triumvirate CEO John McQuillan told the Times the facility handles "some of the most disgusting stuff on the face of the planet."
Most of the deliveries end up incinerated, but useful plastics — such as syringe containers and surgical tool packages — become building materials in the form of plastic lumber.
"It's like a smelly Willy Wonka," Mr. McQuillan said.
Read more here.