A practical approach to waste management

Here, Stuart Budd, head of Environment, Safety and Health, and Keerti Baker, PR and communications executive, at SRCL, one of the UK’s leading healthcare waste specialists, look in some detail at the updated guidance, with a particular focus on new developments in the area of clinical waste.

The Guidance on the Safe Management of Healthcare Waste (HTM 07-01) provides an update to the document first published in 2006. This edition supersedes previous editions of the document, with some of the key areas of change covering updates to legislation since 2006, specifically for environmental permitting and transport/carriage regulations. The updates also focus on the waste hierarchy, and ‘the elimination, minimisation, recycling, and recovery, of waste’. The HTM 07-01 guidance document, now condensed into a 187-page version (compared with the previous version of 450 pages; see www.tinyurl.com/kf263dd), also includes a drive to address the carbon impact related to waste – through resource efficiency, transport impacts, and disposal agreements. Additionally, there is a focus on practical advice, with examples for classifying waste, and in particular the infectious and offensive waste streams, including case studies to highlight best practice. In addition to highlighting the direct environmental benefits achieved through compliant management of healthcare waste, the HTM 07-01 guidance also presents opportunities for introducing cost savings and safer working practices, as well as reducing carbon emissions related to managing waste.

Market trends in clinical waste