BPF medical waste recycling scheme wins environmental award
The British Plastics Federation (BPF) announced that its PVC take-back scheme for medical waste, RecoMed, has been awarded first place in the 2015 Barema and AAGBI Environment Award.
The project was held in collaboration with Axion Consulting.
Running since early 2014, the RecoMed scheme provides recycling containers, communication materials and collections to National Health Service (NHS) and private hospitals that register for the scheme. PVC items currently being collected include anaesthetic masks, oxygen masks and tubing.
RecoMed provides an opportunity to give these easily recyclable and high quality plastics a new lease of life, stated BPF. Participating hospitals save money on waste disposal costs by recycling non-infectious PVC medical items instead of sending them to clinical or offensive waste streams which are currently either incinerated or sent to specialist landfill sites.
The RecoMed PVC take-back scheme is jointly funded by the BPF's Vinyls Group and VinylPlus - the voluntary sustainable development program of the European PVC industry.
The Barema and AAGBI Environment Award, established by Barema (the Association for Anaesthetic and Respiratory Device Suppliers) and The Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland (AAGBI), recognizes excellence in sustainability within the speciality.
