Steps to Segregate Hospital Waste

Proper hospital waste involves a stringent process to ensure that hazardous and non-hazardous materials don’t get mixed with each other. Hospital waste is often segregated into waste bags or bins that have their own color coding.

Based on the type of waste included, waste bins are color coded into the following:

• Red – For any effluent or heavy metal waste
• Black – For non-hazardous hospital waste
• Yellow – For any infectious healthcare waste
• White – For drug vials, bottles, plastic, and other recyclable waste

How to Segregate Hospital Waste

Proper hospital waste segregation involves the accurate identification of various hospital wastes. This way, it will be much easier for healthcare facilities to segregate their waste according to their types.

Hospital waste streams are categorized into the following:

• Chemotherapy waste
• Hazardous waste
• Pathological waste
• Pharmaceutical waste
• Regulated medical waste
• Sharps waste

It also involves the use of specific containment systems for each type of waste to ensure they don’t get mixed. For example, sharps waste should not be mixed with hazardous waste and pathological waste should not be mixed with pharmaceutical waste, and so on.

Aside from color coding, each container should also have a label to indicate the type of waste inside.

Each area will have its own guidelines and regulations when it comes to hospital waste segregation. However, the core guidelines apply which involve the use of labeled and color-coded containers to properly identify which medical waste should go into which container. But since terminologies might differ from one place to another, healthcare facilities should educate their staff when it comes to hospital waste segregation guidelines.