I work in a veterinary clinic. I know that we put sharps into sharps bins, which go into a big medical waste box when they are full, and that a medical waste company picks them up.
What happens after that?
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They dump all the sharps I to a big autoclave (a big airtight chamber that is pressurized with superheated steam) to disinfect them and then they are dumped in a landfill.
We get 35 lb boxes shipped from throughout the country and deliver 8-30 per day to a large plant in our area. They wait until they have a truck full and take it to an incinerator.
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There was a company in the 1990s that built giant ass magnetrons and microwave sterilized them on site then they went into regular trash. I don’t know if they are still doing this or not ( got out of healthcare )
where i worked all bio waste, sharps etc. was put in drums then were sent to incinerator which reduced it to near nothing and what little was left was landfilled which was less than 1% that went in exp. 35gallon drum weighing 125 lbs would be about a ounce of residue maybe
The go into a giant incinerator that burns so hot it basically vaporizes everything. Anything that can’t be converted to hot gases is scraped out the bottom and thrown in the landfill.
At least that’s what they’re contracted to do. I’m sure that there’s a few companies that cut corners resulting in certain boxes finding their way to unorthodox locations…
I used to work with that thecontainer with the needles and such were marked on the container, destroy by incineration.
Can I just take the opportunity to say how much it annoys me that sharps are called sharps. Imagine if we just called tongue depressors Dulls? It’s like a caveman came up with the name.
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Two methods.
Effectively high temp steam for a while to disinfect then shred and landfill
Other method is pure incineration at like 1200 degrees Celsius then landfill the slag
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