Care - Circular flows of plastic & textiles in healthcare

The healthcare sector is a major consumer of single-use plastic products, a high-quality stream that currently only goes to energy recovery. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that about 85% of the total waste stream from healthcare is ‘non-hazardous’ and therefore potentially suitable for recycling.

The project aimed to identify business models and product designs with the potential to promote separate collection and recycling of plastic and textiles from the healthcare sector.

Practical collection and recycling trials of polypropylene (PP) were carried out. The collection trial took place in selected departments at Lund University Hospital in Region Skåne. By conducting larger collection trials, the project was able to evaluate actual volumes of risk-free plastic as well as quality assessments of the collected and recycled material, and gather information on the actual costs of separate handling of plastic intended for recycling.

In addition to the collection trial, recycling trials of the collected plastic were conducted, including pre-washing. The recycled plastic was evaluated for which products it could be used for, and a container for sharp objects was manufactured. The evaluation of plastic quality from the recycling trial formed the basis for design proposals for improved recycling. This was done in close collaboration with medtech companies and the region.

Some key findings from the project are that the health care personnel is very good at source sorting (>98% correct) but that there is a lack of space in hospitals for source sorting. There is no actor for post-sorting of this type of product. Recyclers are skeptical about plastic from hospitals because of concerns about contamination and incorrect sorting of sharp objects. Plastic volumes from healthcare are relatively small to contribute alone to, for example, chemical recycling; they need to be collected with other streams to become large enough. Plastic from healthcare is interesting because it is regulated and therefore does not contain hazardous additives. The quality of the plastic from the collection showed good properties, as only polypropylene was collected, giving the recycled material had a quality comparable to virgin homo-polypropylene of lower grade. The textiles collected were recycled at lab scale, and more process optimization is needed to achieve good textile quality from the recycled material.