#Industry News
THE NEW FRONTIER FOR MEDICAL WASTE TREATMENT.
Medical waste represents an increasingly unsustainable economic and environmental cost. Cisa Group has the solution: an innovative approach to clinical waste management that is safe, economical and sustainable
Waste is a global emergency. It produces pollution that spreads into the air, alters water and makes the earth increasingly dirty and unlivable. Waste costs money: it takes up space and uses up human and economic resources to process it and to repair the environmental and health damage it produces.
Medical waste is particularly damaging: in addition to high management costs for institutions and facilities, it is a major source of CO2, and is treated and disposed of in an obsolete and inefficient way.
Italian data before the pandemic showed an average annual production of around 144,000 tonnes (re. 2019). In 2020, the increase in hospitalisations and the widespread use of PPE led to an increase in consumption and a doubling of that figure (in Italy, 300 thousand tonnes were reached). Pollutant emissions due to an impressive number of trips to incinerators, landfills or recovery centres result in an unbearable logistical and financial burden.
Hospitals and healthcare facilities of all sizes have to deal with complex and hazardous procedures on a daily basis. The storage, transport and treatment of medical waste are considered high-risk operations and represent a high cost for the healthcare industry. These are huge figures on financial statements and shadows on sustainability budgets.
Sustainable development expands the concept of sustainability on the three pillars that focus even more on the responsibility of each actor and the importance of concrete choices and effective solutions. Economic sustainability means the ability to safeguard financial resources, efficiency for businesses and income and work for the livelihood of the population. Environmental sustainability is the ability to maintain the quality, reproducibility and availability of natural resources; this includes everything we can do to be more respectful of the planet. Social sustainability refers to the safeguard of human wellbeing: the ability to ensure living conditions and quality of life in terms of security, health, education, democracy, participation and justice. These three closely related pillars guide every social actor, outlining ethics and responsibility towards direct stakeholders, the surrounding communities and the world at large.
Most countries are developing new regulations to reduce the costs as well as the environmental and social impact of infectious waste, paying special attention to the UN Sustainable Development Guidelines and their related 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
These regulations share similar objectives.
• Proximity. An example is the EU legislation on waste management: “...waste should be disposed of as close to the source as possible”, adopted in Italy with the Simplification for the management of medical waste.
• Reduction of volumes to limit the transport footprint.
• Supporting recycling and reuse measures.
Simplification, introduced in Italy with Conversion Law 40/2020, was a significant innovation: hospital waste, properly sterilised at public and private healthcare facilities according to the dictates of Presidential Decree 254, is now subject to the legal regime of urban waste, and can therefore be disposed of through ordinary municipal waste collection without special handling. This means less transport and less costs, but also less risk for people and a decisive reduction of emissions into the atmosphere.
The legislator promotes on-site sterilisation of medical waste because it reduces health hazards and the impact on the environment
Cisa Group, which has been committed in the development of hospital sterilisation and infection control technologies for over 70 years, has been applying its expertise in medical waste treatment for more than 15 years with measurable benefits. The WSD® (Waste Sterilisation Department) medical waste treatment system enables compliance with new the legislation and ensures safe and environmentally friendly results. It delivers tangible economic, social and environmental benefits in line with at least 5 of the 17 SDGs (source: PWC).
WSD® is an end-to-end solution, a new frontier for waste management.
All tests carried out demonstrate the ability of Cisa’s system to comply with the provisions of Presidential Decree 254, without any air, ground, noise or olfactory pollution. The WSD® ensures respect for the health and safety of operators, communities and the surrounding environment.
The process takes place within the facility. Each step is monitored by Cisa's proprietary software.