Why You Should Recycle During a Pandemic

I know we’re focused on a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) for front line medical workers right now but there’s a dark side to this issue.

Where does all the used PPE go after a pandemic?

Heck, where does all the used PPE go during a pandemic?

It’s Not Just Us

According to the South China Morning Post, at the peak of the COVID-19 outbreak hospitals in Wuhan were left with more than 240 tonnes of medical waste. At the peak of the coronavirus outbreak in China, medical waste generated by hospitals increased by six-fold leaving more than 20 cities deep in medical waste issues.

To manage the overflow, Wuhan, the city where the virus first emerged, had to build a new waste treatment facility and launch 46 mobile medical waste treatment facilities.

Hong Kong’s population of 7.4 million people has been using single-use masks for weeks and now face a backlog of medical waste that needs to be treated and disposed of properly.

Trash Talk

Unfortunately, what to do with all the soiled PPE may prove just as challenging as acquiring enough PPE to protect our frontline workers. But PPE is only a portion of the medical waste produced while caring for a patient infected with coronavirus.

Just to be clear, medical waste includes all of the soiled PPE that front line healthcare providers, and everyone else, are using day and night, as well as needles, sharps, any material (gloves, gowns, etc) contaminated with bodily fluids, biohazardous waste, and pathologic waste.

Medical waste also includes single-use plastics such as urinals and saline syringes, and items specifically packaged for single-use (to avoid infection) such as IV tubing, catheters, alcohol wipes, and surgery drapes.

A discussion on the rise (and trashing) of disposable medical supplies is a conversation for another post.

For now, it’s important to realize the domino effect: as the pandemic expands, so will the medical waste.

Waste Not

Medical waste is treated differently than ordinary solid waste. On the federal level, the Occupational and Safety Health Administration (OSHA) oversees the regulation of medical waste when it comes to safe handling, while the Department of Transportation oversees the safe transporting of medical waste.

That leaves the responsibility to manage and treat medical waste before disposing of it to the states. Most states have regulations requiring that medical waste be separated from other waste and go through a special process of decontamination prior to it finding its final wasting place. This has caused concerns for waste treatment facilities across the country.

There is the need (and expense) of additional laborers to collect and disinfect the mounting medically infected COVID-19 waste. In order to do this, the waste management labor force needs protection with PPE, which, in turn, must be disinfected and disposed of separately from other solid waste.

Also the expense and labor in the form of additional cleaning of waste management facilities where coronavirus medical waste is treated needs to be considered.

Technically, additional disinfecting isn’t required. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) stated that the medical waste from facilities treating COVID-19 does not need to be treated any differently than medical waste from facilities not treating COVID-19.

On the other hand, the CDC also stated, “It may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes, but this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.”

These seemingly conflicting statements spark concerns for those who are up to their armpits in COVID-19 medical waste especially since there are no clear cut recommendations on exactly how long the coronavirus can live on surfaces.

Regardless, waste management facilities are responding by outfitting their employees with PPE, but also taking extra precautions such as disinfecting facilities between twice and six times daily.

This same concern of exposing workers to the virus through the handling of potentially contaminated recyclables has many states and local governments across the nation halting recycling during the pandemic and deeming recycling as “non-essential”.

So, Why Recycle During a Pandemic?

I’m so glad you asked!

As the pandemic expands, so will the waste. Recycling can help in two ways.

Less Waste for Landfills

This is the most obvious. One of the main benefits of recycling is to divert waste from landfills. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the US prevents, on average, about 60 million (US) tons of trash from living in our landfills every year. In 2017, the US recycled 67 million (US) tons of waste.

Any day that we can avoid using landfills, is a great day.

More Raw Material

According to the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI), recycling is a “crucial first link” in the manufacturing supply chain of raw materials. ISRI states that over 75% of US paper mills use recycled paper for their daily production needs, and recycling is responsible for 58% of the feedstock for US tissue mills.

In his article Recycling During a Pandemic, Jordan Fengel, a member of the Solid Waste Environmental Excellence Protocol (SWEEP) Local Government Committee in Texas, urges us to continue to recycle. He wrote, “There must be continued public participation by the healthy population in recycling to provide feedstock to entities that use recycled content.”

Is Recycling Safe?

There is much to be learned about the novel coronavirus, but one thing we have observed is that it acts very similar to other corona viruses. So much so in fact, that according to the CDC, it is susceptible to the same disinfecting methods as other coronaviruses and, in the US, any waste created from the care of those with confirmed COVID-19 does not require additional considerations to process.

The concern of potentially interacting with the virus while handling curbside material and the possibility of spreading it throughout the community as a result is valid. However, handling waste is not a proven disease pathway for COVID-19 nor has it been identified by the CDC as requiring special precaution other than PPE, which is the same requirement for other regulated medical waste.

According to OSHA, workers should handle household and business (municipal) solid waste with known or potential COVID-19 contamination the same way they would handle non-contaminated household/business waste.

Regarding medical waste, OSHA recommends handling medical waste with potential or known COVID-19 infection just like any other regulated medical waste because COVID-19 is not a Category A infectious substance.

Recycling is Essential!

Recycling is as essential now as it ever has been, if not more essential. This is not a good time to suspend recycling in our communities.

The US Department of Labor is encouraging recycling during the pandemic as long as the proper controls for safety and practices are in place, i.e., PPE.

The least we can do is ensure that when we find all the necessary PPE for our frontline workers, we can dispose of it properly and safely and recycling can help ensure that we do.

“Let us strive on to finish the work we are in.” Abraham Lincoln

*Please note, as we discuss what we know right now about COVID-19, each day new information is forthcoming about the spread and characteristics of this virus.