Healthcare Plastics Recycling: Tackling the Scalability Problem

Post on 11-Apr-2017

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transcript

The Opportunity with

Healthcare Plastic Resources

Over 5,000 US Hospitals

5.9 Million Tons of

Waste per Year

1.2 Million Tons of

Clean Plastics Available

Easy to identify products …

High quality materials …

PP PP, PET, PETG, PS

PP or PVC“Blue Wrap” PP

PP, PET, HDPE

Tyvek® (HDPE) with PP Tray

“One hospital doesn’t

generate enough

bales to make a

business…”

The dilemma …

Differing Priorities Existing Contractual arrangements Dynamic plastics Market

Varying models of Recycling

Current situation in waste management…

Chicago Demonstration Project

Testing for a solution …

Multi-hospital plastics recycling project in Chicago

Demonstrate a viable business

model for recycling healthcare plastics.

Target is to recycle 100 tons of plastics over next 12 months

Chicago Demonstration Project

Participants from across the value chain …

Hospitals

Waste Services, Recyclers

End-Users and Service Providers

Project Sponsors:

Effectively extracting materials from current processes

Immature infrastructure; demand pull will be led by the entrepreneurs

Getting all stakeholders to raise their hand!

Challenges that still need solution

What have we learned in scaling our efforts?

What have we learned in scaling our efforts?

Sorting creates the real value

Longer-term thinkers needed

Recycler needs to collaborate

with hospital to set up recovery

systems

Hospital needs to be motivated

to act

Next Steps!

Questions?