Hospitals generate an estimated 5 million tons of biomedical waste per year.
About 15% of this is hazardous, infectious toxic, radioactive waste.
About 85% is domestic waste.
Domestic waste has single use plastic products such as gloves, surgical aprons, syringes, packaging devices, tubing and linen savers.
This is according to researchers from the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)Dr Maya John, Dr Asanda Mtibe, Dr Sudhakar Muniyasamy, Nomvuyo Nomadolo, Pumela Jafta and Dr Vincent Ojijo.
They are part of researchers wanting to reduce plastic and other waste in South Africa.
“Compostable plastic presents an opportunity for single-use medical devices, such as diagnostic kits” said Dr Maya John, who presented on behalf of the bioplastics and biocomposites unit.
“Our motto is we don’t want to do research that ends up in the lab. We want to see this translated where it makes an impact. We want to see this commercialized and scaled up.
This was echoed by Dr Taahira Goga, Researcher on sustainability, economics and waste research group at the CSIR, who said there needs to be harmony between research and policy making, especially to define goals to tackle plastic waste at a local, regional and global level.
Her study has a focus on “a life cycle-based evaluation of alternative strategies towards a circular and low-carbon SA Plastics.”
Some of her findings suggest a combination of strategies, circularity and decarbonisation, that will deliver an almost immediate improvement in material and environmental indicators in 2025, and between 25 and 41% by 2035.
Professor Suzanne Oelofse, Principal Researcher at the University of the North-West’s Department of Environmental, admits there is no single solution to address the plastic problem.
She shared three scenarios that could attempt to reduce plastic waste, between 2006 – 2040.
They are “business as usual, the Extended Producer Responsibility and the Optimal system change.”
“The Optimal Systems Change scenario combines strategies to reduce plastic demand, increase plastics waste collection and recycling as well as improve the safe disposal of plastics to sanitary landfill, in order to achieve a 63% reduction in plastics pollution.”
This solution will require downstream and upstream interventions to achieve a reduction of 63% in pollution.
Its forecast is that demand for plastic will decrease by 2,57% per annum, which would push up collections to 4,85%, and recycling would increase by 4,87% and disposal to sanitary landfill would increase by 3,36% per annum.
The CSIR is also part of other research initiatives, including work with own hub (#SolvePlasticsAfrica), UNIDO, collaboration with other countries such as Zambia, the UNEP National Plastics Source Inventory and Action Plan and the GEF South African Food and Beverage Industry.
Plastic products used during COVID, diagram:
Dr Maya John, Dr Asanda Mtibe, Dr Sudhakar Muniyasamy, Nomvuyo Nomadolo, Pumela Jafta and Dr Vincent Ojijo.