Solutions to recycle Single-use Sanitary Safety

In a previous workshop Institut Català de la Salut (ICS), presented its needs, experience and challenges of reusing and recycling single-use sanitary safety material. Now companies are invited to discuss their solutions under development or solutions already existing on the market, with ICS.

Please note, that the meeting is free of charge but registration is mandatory.

Register no later than 12 October.

The dialogue is an activity within the BRINC project. In the project we work to get municipalities to identify their needs for innovation procurement for circular solutions and bring together their procurement units with companies.

BRINC is co-funded by the COSME programme of the European Union.

Background

To ensure the safety of patients and healthcare personnel, large quantities of health safety materials and single-use personal protection are used, which must be discarded once they have fulfilled their purpose. Institut Català de la Salut (ICS) is the biggest public healthcare provider in Catalonia with 8 Hospitals, 332 Primary Care Centres, 617 rural Medical offices and 52.000 professionals and consume large quantities of disposable sanitary safety items.

On average per month:

• 60,000 gowns
• 30,000 aprons
• 200,000 surgical drapes, sheets, and other cloths
• 1,000,000 masks
• 17,000,000 gloves
• 400,000 caps, pants, gloves, and other protective equipment
• A total of approx. 13,500 tonnes/year.

Apart from the 8 hospitals, ICS also manages a network of more than 900 Primary Care Centers and Local Consultations, which, to a lesser extent but with larger geographical coverage, also generate this type of waste.

After having arranged an online workshop in June to learn more about the reuse and recycling of single-use sanitary safety materials representatives of ICS are now interested in a dialogue with relevant companies to discuss existing solutions and solutions under development for recycling of single-use sanitary safety material and therefore we are contacting you. ISC's goal with the workshop is to learn more about the current and potential solutions and solution providers available on the market and obtain valuable information to further develop and refine the functional specifications in the upcoming procurement.

The following aspects are of importance:

• The different sanitary safety items (gloves, masks, aprons etc.) are not sorted into different fractions but mixed.
• The materials are of plastic origin, but of different types (polyethylene, polypropylene, latex, nitrile, vinyl, neoprene, etc.) which can be mixed.
• The materials have had a sanitary use and are classified as Group II sanitary waste, with a low biological risk, but may need a biological decontamination treatment before being valued.