Recycling garbage can for clinical waste with high resource potential

In addition to the joint project SingleUseRecovery, the strategically oriented KlinikWertstoffe project focuses on high-quality hospital waste from various material composites. Here, the requirements with regard to contamination hazards are more demanding, so that the waste must undergo one or more preparation stage(s) yet to be defined before it can be recycled. Thus, a longer time horizon until implementation has to be considered for the KlinikWertstoffe project. The experience then available with the collection and recycling of metal-based disposable instruments can be used in a targeted manner to transfer these to the "clinic waste recycling garbage can" model, which in perspective can be used for a high proportion of disposable products used.

The focus of the joint project is on the conception of a recyclable material garbage can for various, high-quality hospital waste, primarily from single-use instruments, which are currently not recycled. These are in particular:

• Metal/plastic composite items such as cannulas, single-use scalpels or electrosurgical instruments
• High-value single-use articles made of various functional components such as endoscopes, power tools, EP catheters or instruments for surgical robots.

The requirements for such a recycling garbage can are demanding. However, the opportunity can be taken here to enable subsequent automated sorting by decontamination methods such as UV-C radiation. Thus, feeding the generated material-specific fractions into established recycling routes becomes legally possible and feasible in practice.

Work packages

Definition of product range

• Quantity balancing
• Segmentation of single-use products into material groups with focus on established recovery and recycling routes
• Determination of the recovery potential of raw materials, exemplary for selected, representative products with sufficient quantity relevance

Development of a decontamination concept

• Pre-selection of possible decontamination methods according to technical and economic criteria
• Collection of representative single-use products from current hospital operations
• Performance of decontamination tests and verification of the quality achieved
• Final evaluation and decision

Test phase - collection

• Selection of clinics/wards
• Carrying out a risk assessment
• Preliminary discussions in clinics
• 2-week phases for collection of single-use products
• Collection of the containers
• Conducting final interviews

Test phase - decontamination

• Creation of a functional model for decontamination
• Execution of decontamination tests on the basis of the collected products
• Verification of the achieved quality
• Final evaluation and recommendations for container design

Presentation and discussion of the results

• Creation of a demonstrator for a recyclable hospital waste garbage can
• Presentation of the performance, first economic evaluation
• Presentation of the results to economic stakeholders, in expert committees and to decision makers in waste management authorities
• Final recommendation for the further procedure with the aim of a medium-term implementation
  

Planned start and duration of the project:

01.01.2024 - duration 2 years

Contribution to the project by the partners: 4,990.00 €/year*.

✓ Kick-off meeting and two project meetings per year

✓ Detailed final report at the end of the project

✓ Protected online access to the project results


  * The project can be started if the required project amount of 78.000,00€ per year is reached.