Healthcare waste management is an essential component of safe, sustainable, and high-quality care. Healthcare facilities generate large volumes of waste every day, including general waste, biomedical waste, pharmaceutical waste, hazardous materials, and sharps. While only a small proportion of healthcare waste requires specialized treatment, improper segregation often results in unnecessary incineration or sterilization, increasing costs, greenhouse gas emissions, and environmental pollution. Evidence suggests that up to 85% of healthcare waste can be safely managed through general waste, recycling, or composting streams when correctly segregated. Improving waste management therefore represents a major opportunity to reduce environmental impacts while maintaining patient and staff safety.
Sustainable waste management requires clear understanding of waste categories, regulations, and treatment methods such as autoclaving, hydroclaving, microwaving, and incineration. Practical tools support change by helping organizations strengthen waste segregation practices, conduct waste audits, update internal policies, and reduce overall waste generation through approaches such as reuse, reprocessing, recycling, and the “10 Rs” framework.
Successful implementation depends on staff education, leadership support, collaboration with waste vendors and local partners, and embedding sustainable waste practices into everyday clinical and operational workflows. Exploring practical resources, case studies, and implementation tools can help healthcare teams identify realistic opportunities to improve waste management, reduce environmental harm, and support safer, more sustainable systems of care.
Playbook: Navigating biomedical waste management policies for sustainability
Maggie Chen, Western University & London Health Sciences Centre
Formalin represents a significant source of chemical waste in pathology laboratories, with both its production and disposal carrying substantial environmental and financial costs. This resource outlines the formalin recycling methodology piloted within the Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Department at London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC). The initiative involved collecting and reusing clear formalin from surgical pathology biopsy specimens for subsequent use in the autopsy suite. Based on the results of this one-month pilot, projections indicate that expanding the protocol across all workstations for a full year could enable LHSC to save more than $3,000 annually in procurement costs while preventing 2,170 kg CO₂e emissions. By documenting and sharing this approach, we aim to support the operationalisation of sustainable waste management practices across other pathology departments and hospitals.
For additional information or to request the final report and detailed results, please contact maggiee.chen@mail.utoronto.ca.
Western University & London Health Sciences Centre
Hospitals frequently overclassify biomedical waste, resulting in unnecessary environmental impacts and increased disposal costs. This resource outlines the waste audit and reclassification methodology developed and implemented by staff in autopsy suite of London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC). Following this protocol, the initiative achieved a 56% reduction in annual waste disposal emissions and a 62% reduction in disposal costs, preventing 1427 kgco2e from being released into the atmosphere annually. By documenting and sharing this approach, we aim to support the operationalisation of sustainable waste management practices across other pathology departments and hospitals.
For additional information or to request the final report and detailed results, please contact maggiee.chen@mail.utoronto.ca.
This infographic and corresponding primer are intended for healthcarepolicymakers and individual changemakers looking for opportunities for change inaccordance with provincial, national and federal regulations. For any complementary information about this topic, please refer to the CASCADES Hazardous Medical Waste Management primer.
