EBME Forums Forums Management Medical Equipment Management Recycling Polystyrene waste

Hello Fellow Biomeds. Hope the pandemic is slowing down a bit where you are.
Not sure how many of you deal with blood gas machines and the reagents that are needed for them.
We have Radiometer machines here and some of the reagents for the AQT90 and ABL 90 are sent to us in cold packs inside Polystyrene boxes. At present Radiometer has no method of recycling these boxes, which means in theory that they go into the waste and probably end up in land fill somewhere or even the sea eventually.

I'm hoping like me that you feel that this isnt appropriate for a Danish company that states its sustainability on its web site https://www.radiometer.co.uk/en-gb/about-radiometer/sustainability

I have asked them about returning these boxes and cool packs, but so far they have no method of doing this.
I'm just one customer in one hospital, in one country. This issue will be happening all over the world.

Ive just sent the boxes back to them anyway.
If you feel that you want them and yourself to help save the planet from another bit of pollution, please contact your local Radiometer rep and let them know that you expect them to recycle this stuff.
This is a global forum, so the more people complain, the more likely they are to listen.

Have a good weekend

Richard

In Germany they have a law (Verpackungsverordnung) that requires manufacturers to take responsibility for recycling or disposing of any packaging material they sell.

I suspect that the only practicable way of getting rid of polystyrene is high temperature incineration - that is, in an industrial setting where the heat generated may be used to drive steam turbines and so forth.

On the other hand, do you need to factor in the "carbon footprint" (or whatever) expended in shipping the stuff back to source?

But yes, the Radiometer site seems to be very "green" (all boxes ticked, by the look of it).