By GREGORY ZELLER //
One of the nation’s largest producers of biohazardous materials is incorporating a cutting-edge technology from Ireland designed to safely handle infectious medical waste – and save the world, too.
As New York State’s largest healthcare provider, and a mecca of next-generation laboratory research, Northwell Health annually produces hundreds of thousands of pounds of biohazardous waste.
Until now, those potentially dangerous materials have been handled the old-fashioned way: a combination of autoclaving (sterilization via high-pressure steam saturation) and conventional disposal/transportation methods, with trucks clogging roadways and used materials piling up at regional landfills.
That’s worked, insofar as protecting Northwell staffers and patients – but has only increased greenhouse gas emissions and contributed to an evolving landfill crisis on Long Island and beyond.
Enter GENERATIONS, a groundbreaking system designed by Irish cleantech pioneer Envetec Sustainable Technologies to provide safe and effective on-site treatment of regulated medical waste – including single-use laboratory plastics, glass, PPE and sharps containers – and eliminate old-school solutions contributing to America’s evolving waste-disposal nightmare.
Michael Dowling: Waste not.
Previous generations of Envetec’s waste-disposal systems – built to simultaneously shred and disinfect infectious waste using a patented destruction/disinfection process that kills COVID-19 viruses and other bacteria, spores and dangerous pathogens – were approved during the COVID pandemic by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the New York State Department of Health and have been employed by Northwell for years.
GENERATIONS significantly ups production, aiming to sustainably treat more than 500,000 pounds of regulated medical waste produced annually by Northwell’s Center for Advanced Medicine, where the vast health system’s Core Laboratory processes samples from more than 20,000 patients daily.
According to data provided by Northwell and Envetec, compared to the “standard treatment” of regulated medical waste at nine global sites, GENERATIONS will decrease waste-related Scope 3 emissions – a carbon-footprint scale measuring not only a company’s emissions, but emissions generated by its assets and activities (such as trucking medical waste) – by 90 percent or more.
That, obviously, is a monumental upgrade, according to Northwell Health President and CEO Michael Dowling, another Irish import who trumpets the GENERATIONS system as an important new weapon in the battle against global warming.
“Climate change is undeniably becoming a public health crisis that requires urgent action and leadership from hospitals,” Dowling said Wednesday. “As the largest hospital network … in New York, Northwell Health is fully committed to leading the transition toward a sustainable healthcare future.”
Northwell Health is the first U.S. hospital system to incorporate GENERATIONS for the treatment of regulated medical waste – a “meaningful innovation” that will help New York’s largest private employer “meet [its] climate goals,” according to Envetec Chairman and CEO Malcolm Bell.
Among those goals: a 50 percent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
“We are delighted to be partnering with one of the largest healthcare systems in the [United States],” Bell said in a statement. “Enabling laboratories to break free from their reliance on transportation, autoclaving, incineration and landfill requires a new standard in waste management.
“GENERATIONS treats biohazardous waste onsite and plays a crucial role in reducing Scope 3 emissions.”
