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Waste management: Pandemic compounds waste disposal issues

12 Feb 2022

  • Urgent need for national medical waste management plan
  • Pandemic-driven health regulations flood ecosystem with plastics
  • CEJ calls for national survey to map pandemic-driven waste impact
  • State Ministries formulate medical waste collection protocols
  • Covid waste and medical waste from hospitals should be treated differently: Dr. Jasinghe
By Maheesha Mudugamuwa The Covid-19 pandemic has not only put the entire human race at risk but also the environment, as it has produced millions of tonnes of medical waste – syringes, plastics, facemasks, gloves, etc., straining waste management systems around the world during the past two years. Unlike other countries, Sri Lanka did not possess a robust waste collecting mechanism before the pandemic. Two year later, Sri Lanka is struggling to cope with this ever-increasing additional medical waste generated due to the pandemic. Environmentalists allege that Covid-19 related medical waste has further aggravated the already existing garbage issue in the country. According to them, the amount of plastic and polythene being added to the environment has now increased drastically. The increase is significant as there was no proper mechanism to dispose of the day-to-day medical waste that is being collected in households in urban and rural areas alike. Waste management was earlier an issue only in urban areas but after the pandemic it has now become an issue in every part of the country, environmentalists claim, urging the Government to pay more attention and come up with a practical action plan to solve the waste issue as the using of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) such as facemasks and gloves will continue in the years ahead until the end of the pandemic. Proper disposal mechanism needed Speaking to The Sunday Morning, Centre for Environment Justice (CEJ) Executive Director Hemantha Withanage said the consumption of medical equipment such as facemasks and sanitiser bottles had increased during the past two years due to the pandemic and most of these waste items were also collected by municipal councils, the usual waste collectors. “These waste items are being dumped as usual garbage and there is no special mechanism to sort these items separately and discard accordingly except in a few instances where some collectors gather these items and send them for recycling purposes. We got to know that some are incinerating these items but mostly those are also being dumped at usual garbage sites by the municipal councils,” he explained. According to Withanage, the Government should introduce a new mechanism to municipal councils when handling medical items collected from households.  “Earlier, medical waste was handled by special teams or some hospitals that had incinerators. But since the pandemic has led to everybody dealing with medical waste daily, a new set of rules should be introduced and those should be implemented immediately,” he stressed. Withanage noted that thousands of sanitiser bottles were being discarded by the households around the country and only around 30% of this waste was being managed by municipalities.  “This has now become a serious issue. When these items are dumped into the environment, it damages the ecosystem. Animals are hugely impacted and therefore we cannot ignore this issue now,” he noted.  According to the CEJ Executive Director, lack of research in this field of medical waste management and statistics with regard to the newly-added medical waste are serious issues. “More research and surveys should be conducted so as to ascertain the damage that is caused by this medical waste,” he noted.  WHO report In the meantime, a new report from the World Health Organization (WHO), titled A Global Analysis of Healthcare Waste in the Context of Covid-19: Status, Impacts and Recommendations, has estimated that approximately 87,000 tonnes of PPE that was procured between March 2020-November 2021 and shipped to support countries’ urgent Covid-19 response needs through a joint UN emergency initiative. The WHO has pointed out that over 140 million test kits, with a potential to generate 2,600 tonnes of non-infectious waste (mainly plastic) and 731,000 litres of chemical waste (equivalent to one-third of an Olympic-size swimming pool) have been shipped, while over eight billion doses of vaccine have been administered globally, producing 144,000 tonnes of additional waste in the form of syringes, needles, and safety boxes. The report has further highlighted that 30% of healthcare facilities (60% in the least developed countries) are not equipped to handle existing waste loads, let alone the additional Covid-19 load and this potentially exposes health workers to needle stick injuries, burns, and pathogenic microorganisms, while also impacting communities living near poorly managed landfills and waste disposal sites through contaminated air from burning waste, poor water quality, or disease carrying pests.  However, the report has laid out a set of recommendations for integrating better, safer, and more environmentally sustainable waste practises into the current Covid-19 response and future pandemic preparedness efforts and highlights stories from countries and organisations that have put into practice in the spirit of ‘building back better’. The recommendations include using eco-friendly packaging and shipping, safe and reusable PPE (e.g., gloves and medical masks), recyclable or biodegradable materials; investment in non-burn waste treatment technologies, such as autoclaves; reverse logistics to support centralised treatment; and investments in the recycling sector to ensure materials, like plastics, can have a second life. Lankan protocols In a backdrop where the world is forced to shift into more eco-friendly mechanisms to produce less medical waste, The Sunday Morning learns that Sri Lanka too had formulated a set of protocols that should be followed by the waste collectors when handling medical waste from households. The protocols that had been formulated together by the Ministry of Environment and Ministry of Health had already been handed over to the Ministry of Public Services, Provincial Councils, and Local Government. “We have identified that the quantity of medical waste collected from households around the country has increased and therefore we, together with the Ministry of Health, have jointly formulated a set of protocols to be followed by the waste collectors while collecting these household medical waste and handed over to the Ministry of Local Governments,” Ministry of Environment Secretary Dr. Anil Jasinghe told The Sunday Morning. He added: “Even though these new waste items such as facemasks, gloves, etc. are considered as medical waste, those should be dumped alongside with the other household items and cannot be treated separately as medical waste collected from hospitals. Internationally, these items are collected as usual household waste.” Dr. Jasinghe added that even though that was the usual practice, these items could sometimes pose a health risk, especially when it came to the spreading of the coronavirus in the event these items were contaminated. “Therefore, together with the Health Ministry Secretary, we have prepared a joint letter and sent it to the Ministry of Local Governments by introducing new protocols,” he stressed, adding however that it was not practical to treat these items as medical waste that is collected from hospitals.


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