(Photo courtesy of the Healthcare Plastics Recycling Council)The Healthcare Plastics Recycling Council (HPRC) kicked off a new project this week to identify successful strategies for recycling the multi-material flexible plastic packaging that is currently being discarded as hospital waste.
In collaboration with researchers from UMass Lowell’s Plastics Engineering Department, HPRC plans to test whether commercially available compatibilizers improve blend properties when compounded with multi-material flexible plastics. Another goal is to identify potential end market applications for the resulting recycled product.
HRPC project manager Chris Rogers says the council’s research shows that up to 60% of plastic waste generated by healthcare facilities is flexible material. “The challenge with healthcare flexibles is that they are often composed of multi-material laminates which are unrecyclable when using common recycling technologies,” he says.
This week the project begins with the collection of flexible plastic materials such as sterilization wrap, Tyvek, and film packaging at several participating hospitals. They include Cleveland Clinic’s Main Campus in Ohio, three Pennsylvania hospitals in the Lehigh Valley Health Network, and Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire.
Ultimately the project aims to collect and send 2,000 pounds of material to the plastic recycling equipment manufacturer EREMA, which will do initial processing at their facility in Ipswich, Massachusetts. After that, UMass Lowell researchers will take the material and add compatibilizers before doing extrusion and injection molding. Project results from testing and analysis should be ready by mid-summer, according to HPRC.
The project scales up one that HPRC previously completed with Penn State University. HPRC members Baxter, BD, DuPont, Eastman, Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic, and Nelipak Healthcare Packaging are providing funding. The Flexible Packaging Association is contributing as well.
“The volume of discarded healthcare plastics is huge and the ability to recycle this material would reduce the landfill burden while preserving the value of these highly engineered products,” says Margaret Sobkowicz, an associate professor at UMass Lowell’s Francis College of Engineering.
Hospital waste recycling and management has begun to emerge as a major, if challenging, priority in the healthcare industry.
Radish Magazine reported this week that the Mayo Clinic Recycling Center in Minnesota goes well beyond standard materials. Before April 2017, surgical blue wrap used to be send to the landfill. Now it gets bagged, baled, and recycled at the center — almost 1,200 pounds weekly. Those bales then go to a company that melts and processes the material back into polypropylene.
The 3rd Annual Environmental Leader & Energy Manager Conference takes place May 15 – 17, 2018 in Denver. Learn more here.
