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Within the European Union, infectious health care waste is now classified as special or
hazardous waste. As incorrect handling, transportation and disposal of such waste can cause injury or infection, strict
legislation which must be complied with, is now in place relating to these aspects.
Tighter legislation needs expensive modernisation of existing
incinerators. However, in many instances it has not been cost effective to upgrade such equipment and this has resulted in
the closing down of hundreds of incinerators which were formerly used to burn these types of waste. With fewer installations
throughout Europe able to accept health care waste for treatment, the distances required for transportation are much longer,
resulting in elevated costs for handling, transportation and treatment. The disposal of health care waste in the past was
predominantly done by incineration. Many such incinerators had inadequate emission control systems and consequently, were potentially
harmful to the environment.
This has led to the search for alternative technologies to incineration and for a waste treatment system that renders
the waste safe and harmless for handling, thus allowing the recycling and disposal practices which are used for the
disposal of domestic waste.
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It is in this field of technology that STERIFANT has developed a world-wide
patented system that can be used as a mobile or stationary system for the treatment of health care waste on-site. Special waste management and
handling problems are reduced or solved:
• There is no intermediate storage necessary, neither costs for it
• No specific protective clothing requirements
• No specialised transportation
The STERIFANT system will also reduce the volume of the waste by up to 80%, resulting in the disposal of far fewer volumes of waste.
Waste treated by the STERIFANT system is totally disinfected. Thus, any risk of injury from bodily contact with the treated
waste is minimised. Moreover, the disinfected waste, following shredding into tiny fragments, ensures that even syringe needles,
scalpel blades or glass bottles do not mean a threat to anybody.
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