Grundon Waste Management has launched a new reusable sharps container service which it said saves an average of 87% of the carbon used within the lifetime of a container.
The service, developed in partnership with Inpress Precision, which specialises in manufacturing for the medical and healthcare sector, uses Sharpak Zero™ reusable containers.
Sharps are a type of biomedical waste which includes any object or device used to puncture or lacerate a patient’s skin.
Andy Stratton, Grundon’s Commercial Manager, said: “By 2026, trusts have been tasked with achieving a 50% reduction in carbon emissions produced from waste management, a figure that rises to 80% by 2028-2032.
“In particular, they have to reduce the average net cost of clinical waste management by 15% per tonne of waste by 2030, and this is where we can help.”
We were extremely pleased with the trial results and believe Grundon’s reusable sharps container service has the potential to generate real carbon savings for NHS Trusts.
Grundon said that the Sharpak Zero containers, which are approved to UN standards, are collected in the same way as previous containers but are emptied at its facilities using specialist equipment.
The contents are weighed before being sent for High-Temperature Incineration, then the empty containers are sanitised and inspected before being returned to Inpress Precision for quality checking and redistribution.
Each Sharpak Zero container is fitted with an identifying barcode to track the number of times it has been used.
After 10 uses, the container will be granulated for reprocessing into new containers, Grundon said. After 10 cycles of 10 uses, the plastic is granulated again and used in other plastic products.
Commenting on the trial, Stratton said: “We were extremely pleased with the trial results and believe Grundon’s reusable sharps container service has the potential to generate real carbon savings for NHS Trusts.
“The benefits of this process are three-fold. Most importantly, we are saving carbon emissions because we are no longer needlessly incinerating millions of single-use sharps containers every year.
“Secondly, weighing just the contents of the bins gives NHS trusts a true carbon reduction figure because it does not include the weight of the bin; and lastly, cleaning and reusing the containers mean no plastic is wasted in addition to dramatically reducing the amount of virgin plastic required to produce new bins each time.”
