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“Haemodialysis (the most common type of dialysis treatment) involves making a circuit where blood is pumped from the patient’s bloodstream through a machine, and then back to the patient. This process removes toxins and excess water and is life-sustaining for patients with kidney failure,” says Dr. Katherine Barraclough of the Royal Melbourne Hospital.
Numerous plastic tubes are used in this treatment process to maintain safety and sanitary conditions and remove the risk of re-infecting the patient. These single-use plastic pieces must be burned or sterilized to kill off infection and are usually dumped by the ton into landfills.
Mixing this sterilized and shredded plastic scrap at concentrations of .5% to 1% into traditional concrete results in a more durable, long-lasting, and waterproof finished concrete. Moreover, water abortion into the substrate is reduced by 30%, protecting the corrosion of pipes and damage to foundations.
Houston, Texas: Sharps into Sustainable Concrete
Another team in Houston, Texas is focusing on sharps as a possible option for reducing environmental impact while producing concrete for building.
Sharps include syringes, needles, and lancets used at home and in retail clinics. The Sharps Compliance collects these biohazardous materials from patients being treated for a variety of conditions including cancer and diabetes and those undergoing elective procedures like In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) and the annual flu shot.
Normally, sharps waste is burned and shredded before being hauled off to landfills by the truckload. Under the 2010 Houston experiment, sharps were instead sterilized, melted down and reproduced into pellets to be used as a fuel for cement making. Byproduct ash was mixed into cement as well to increase durability and reduce waste. The experiments resulted in a stronger and less expensive building cement product and a significant reduction of waste.
Pakistan: Hospital Waste Ash Creates Lower Cost Concrete
The third experiment in Pakistan converted hospital waste ash into a super durable, concrete product for building.
Hospitals produce a huge amount of waste in the form of broken glass, syringes, needles, and surgical items. To effectively sterilize and dispose of it, some hospitals burn waste down to ash, resulting in a smaller volume of waste to then be taken to the dump.
The department of Civil Engineering at Nazarbayev University in Pakistan collected hospital waste ash (HWA) to use as an additive in concrete. The end product proved to be of a higher density than traditional concrete, has decreased time to set and is much less expensive.
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Article by
Laura Bourland
Laura grew up in the California suburbs, far removed from environmentalism, but nature always has a way. She uprooted her life in 2015, moving to the countryside of Washington to live a more sustainable and simple life on 12 acres. She and her fiancee are learning on the job as they attempt everything from gardening and natural pest control to eco-friendly building and home improvement.
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