The Carbon and Energy Fund (CEF) is looking for NHS hospitals open to working with it to investigate the potential benefits of installing an ‘innovative total waste and waste water handling system designed specifically for healthcare’ by Dutch company, Pharmafilter, ‘at no extra capital or revenue cost’.
Pharmafilter’s ‘total waste management solution’ reportedly takes hospital waste at source (from wards, consulting, and sluice rooms) – including pharmaceuticals, swill, sewage, refuse, and healthcare risk waste – and transports it through existing waste water pipework, converting the waste to digestate and recyclate clean water and energy –‘all of which has a value’.
The CEF said: “Installation of a Pharmafilter system eliminates the complexity involved in waste management – i.e. all the various bins and bags clogging wards and clinical spaces, the load on porters transporting waste containers, transport and waste administration, and the impact of trucks and pollution. It also reduces crossinfection, mis-sorting, and associated damage to healthcare buildings and congestion, leaving clean, drug-free water, and dry inorganic material, that is nonhazardous, and suitable as refuse-derived fuel, simultaneously reducing the risks of antibiotic resistance in our sewers.”
