Medical Waste Disposal Companies Are Growing Amid Looming Health Threat

Medical waste about to be thrown away. Ground Picture/Shutterstock

News Analysis

Since the advent of COVID-19 in January 2020, there have been many increasing global health threats—pneumonia, Streptococcus Group A, lung infections, fungal pathogens, and the periodic recurrence of other pandemic virus strains compounded from original ones.

But one underreported threat, which ironically comes from hospitals and facilities that spent several years battling the coronavirus, is medical waste.

For the rest of the 2020s, as the U.S. economy continues recovery efforts stemming from the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, medical waste is not only looming as a global issue, it could easily end up as a decisive factor for either more health concerns or a long-awaited toehold in medical stability.

“In terms of the scale, it’s massive,” said Maggie Montgomery, technical officer with the World Health Organization (WHO) in a 2022 video webinar. “We know that 1 in 3 care facilities globally before the pandemic lacked ways to safely segregate and treat waste.”

She said that, during the pandemic, health facilities generated three to four times the amount of waste compared to before the pandemic—and in places where hazardous medical waste was not separated from the non-hazardous, the increase was 10 times higher.

“[Separation] is very important because only 20 percent of health care waste is infectious and hazardous and requires extra care and treatment,” Montgomery said.

“So we have the combined double burden of already weak systems for waste management, coupled by the fact that health workers are extremely overburdened with increased patient loads and can’t manage the existing waste, let alone extra waste.”

Examples of medical waste include blood, bandages, disposable masks, body parts removed during surgery, and medical sharps—such as needles and syringes.

The WHO considers the latter especially substantial, as an estimated 16 billion injections are administered annually worldwide, and not all needles and syringes are properly disposed of afterward.

Additionally, Montgomery noted that “in 2020 alone, 4.5 trillion additional disposable masks were thrown away by the public, resulting in 6 million extra tons of waste.”

By the summer of 2024, there were 179 businesses in the United States dedicated to the safe removal of medical waste.

Stericycle, now part of National Waste Management, operates more than 396 locations across the country. In 2023, the company treated 1.3 billion pounds of medical waste, safely disposing of approximately 55 million pounds of expired medications.

More businesses like Stericycle are expected.

IBISWorld, a global market research firm providing forecasts and industry analysis for businesses, reported in July 2024 a 4.9 percent growth in medical waste disposal services over the past five years—estimated $1.9 billion in revenue—including an expected 1.2 percent growth in 2024, with more growth to come.

All medical waste facilities have to follow U.S. federal, state, and local agency regulations for all means of disposal.

Most of the hazardous or infectious waste is disposed of or sterilized in autoclaves, machines that use steam under pressure to kill harmful bacteria, viruses, fungi, and spores.

Some hospitals, such as Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, registered as extra-large quantity generators of infectious waste, have their own autoclaves.

Montgomery pointed out that while medical personnel everywhere have been trying to handle the issue, extra tonnage has shown up in unprecedented ways.

“Increasingly we’re finding that microplastics are showing up in our waterways and our food systems,” she said. “These are all concerns about health care waste.”

To this end, a firm called EcoSteris, located in Summerville, South Carolina, took the initiative in 2022 to handle the state’s medical waste problem with the construction of a $13 million state-of-the-art treatment facility, containing an autoclave, an automation system, and shredders—which has more than doubled its original capacity in only three years.

“We are now permitted to treat a little over 46 million pounds of waste, making EcoSteris the largest medical waste treatment facility in South Carolina,” Youmna Squalli, company owner and CEO, told The Epoch Times via email. “With such capacity, we will be able to treat the medical waste of all the state’s major hospitals, as well as all of the doctors’ offices and clinics combined.”

The treatment procedure is simple: The medical waste that comes to EcoSteris gets treated first. Then the treated waste gets shredded twice, thereby eliminating the chance of needles and sharps ending up in compactors and landfills even after treatment.

Squalli added that the process will also allow for a better environment through conservation of resources; integrated automated solutions; an improved ecosystem; zero-emissions through clean, non-burning alternative technology; and an “80–85 percent reduction in volume of treated medical waste after shredding.”

This, in the long run, and with similar handling by all medical waste companies, might be enough to avoid a looming environmental crisis, she said.

“Our long-term goal is to divert the treated and shredded waste and to hopefully have zero waste sent to our landfill,” Squalli said.