Waste Disposal
The Full Segregation Streams
The following image is the most important concept in this whole activity.
What you will see is an overview of all the healthcare waste streams in a hierarchy.
From a simple point of view, the higher the waste is in the hierarchy the more complex (and expensive) is to dispose of.
At the 'bottom' of the hierarchy is 'recovery and recycling (potentially income generation and environmentally 'friendly').
At the 'top' of the hierarchy is infectious/medicinal radioactive waste, which is very complex to manage and very expensive to dispose of.
[Figure 6 (p.33) of Health Technical Memorandum 07-01: Safe management of healthcare waste (Department of Health).]