New Victoria Hospital is delighted to be the first private hospital in Britain to take part in ‘RecoMed’ a nationwide recycling scheme which is set to provide significant benefits for the environment.

Every year hospitals across the country dispose of PVC medical devices, many of which are single use only. Such items include IV solution bags; nasal cannulas; oxygen tubes; anaesthetic masks and oxygen masks and it is estimated that around 2250 tonnes of this type of medical PVC could be recycled.

VinylPlus (the voluntary sustainable development program of the EU PVC industry) commissioned both the British Plastics Federation and Axion Consulting to develop RecoMed, a UK PVC take-back scheme for medical PVC waste. The service aims to better manage the 350,000 tonnes of waste the industry produces annually, of which a large percentage is plastic.

Previously the PVC material would have been incinerated as part of clinical or offensive waste streams or sent to specialist landfill. Instead, the collected plastic is shredded and supplied to a specialist recycler who produces 100% recycled horticultural products such as tree ties. Furthermore, participating hospitals also benefit by saving money on waste disposal costs.

The British Plastics Federation (BPF) & Axion’s RecoMed scheme won the Chartered Institute of Waste Management’s (CIWM) Sustainability and Resource Award for Best Recycling Project 2017. This is the scheme’s fourth award to date.

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