7.3.2. Need for standardization
A lack of standardized medical waste streams and associated bin colors is likely a major driver of the aforementioned poor point-of- disposal waste sorting performance, as this lack of standardization makes it difficult for educational facilities to train workers and confuses healthcare staff who transfer from one facility to another (Almuneef and Memish, 2003). To illustrate the lack of
Muhlich et al. (2003) then details the percentage of total med- ical waste that each hospital sends out in the infectious waste stream. By fitting a power trend-line to this data (Fig. 4), it is possible to see a correlation between a higher infectious waste cost multiple and a lower percentage of waste sent out in the infectious medical waste stream. This suggests that the implementation of incentives, monetary or otherwise, for hospitals to improve sorting practices will encourage management to implement better waste sorting practices.
8. Conclusion
Medical waste disposal is a field that requires further study to meet the growing global demand for medical waste disposal. Rising healthcare usage, driven by a variety of factors, is increasing med- ical waste production which in turn is putting stress on current disposal systems. Current disposal strategies involve sorting waste at the point-of-disposal within healthcare facilities, and then transporting the infectious medical waste to a safe disposal site, where it is treated by incineration or autoclaving and the residual product landfilled. Both incineration and autoclave treatment methods have drawbacks, with incineration creating undesirable atmospheric emissions which cause adverse health and environ- mental impacts, and autoclave treatment not able to handle all types of waste nor producing a treated product that is universally accepted at landfills.
The best way to control the impact of medical waste is to pro- duce less, and one of the most effective ways to do this is to ensure that only infectious medical waste is sent for treatment e other hospital waste should be treated in the same manner as municipal household waste. This could be accomplished through better training of healthcare workers along with the implementation of standardized medical waste streams and disposal bin colors.
Further, there are a number of moves that governments could make to reduce the problems of excess infectious medical waste generation and to improve treatment and disposal of all types of medical waste. Firstly, governments should provide highly explicit, standardized definitions of infectious and non-infectious medical waste and should tightly regulate the disposal of infectious waste to prevent illegal dumping of waste. Secondly, governments should provide healthcare facilities with incentives, monetary or other- wise, to reduce medical waste production. These incentives will help convince local healthcare facility management to make waste