Development and commercialisation of a solution for recycling and valorising contaminated hospital plastic waste

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"As the generation of single use plastic wastes increases within the healthcare sector, its handling and treatment is steadily becoming a serious economic and environmental issue. This continual increase in waste is forcing the government, healthcare providers and the related facilities management companies to actively explore ways to effectively utilize the generated hospital plastic waste. Currently, this waste is either incinerated or landfilled- costing up to £1000/ton to the hospitals, depending upon the level of contamination. With more than 500,000tons of plastic waste to deal with each year, NHS is actively looking to reduce the volume of plastic used and find a circular solution to prevent the landfill and/or incineration of this plastic and hence enable cost savings.We, Thermal Compaction Group (TCG), through this project aim to develop a point-of-origin thermal compaction machine 'Sterimlet-2' which will recycle all hospital plastic waste by converting them into 20kg briquettes for reuse. The Machine will initially be processing blue-wrap and disposable curtains waste but it is believed that the technology can be adapted for many other disposable plastics.Sterimelt-2 will not only divert large amounts of plastic waste away from landfill and/or incineration, but it will also reduce the carbon footprint and costs created by transporting this very lightweight and space hungry material, supporting the NHS sustainability goals."