An environmental group is criticizing the nation’s largest medical waste disposal company for not living up to its mission of being environmentally responsible, but the company says its record speaks for itself. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham explains:
Transcript
An environmental group is criticizing the nation’s largest medical waste disposal company for not living up to its mission of being environmentally responsible. But the company says its record speaks for itself. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham explains:
In a new report, the group Health Care Without Harm accuses the medical waste company, Stericycle, of not doing enough to reduce the volume and toxicity of waste. It also criticizes one method of disposal. Charlotte Brody is the director of the group.
“We need Stericycle to stop incinerating, but when we’ve asked them to actually pledge to do that, they’ve backed away.”
Stericycle says it is reducing incineration. Tony Tomasello is the company’s chief technical officer. He says, as the company expanded it acquired other companies’ incinerators.
“We have shut down over half of those. So, I feel we’ve made substantial reduction in the amount of incineration used in the industry.”
Tomasello notes certain waste, such as human tissue and medical records, is required to be incinerated. He adds that Stericycle educates health care providers on how to reduce waste, but the reduction methods aren’t always enforced.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.