Waste Management,Disaster Planning,Sterilization,Biocontainment

There are many factors to consider when determining the method of waste disposal for a facility.

Bio-facility managers must consider many issues when making decisions on the disposal of biological waste. The ‘waste’ being discussed in this article includes animal tissue, carcasses from necropsy rooms, and waste water from various wash-down procedures performed in pathology labs and necropsy rooms. Depending on the lab and the type of research or service being offered, a facility may be dealing with a whole gamut of waste ranging from highly infectious diseases down to non-infectious tissue, carcasses, and water waste.

What is the state of waste disposal in today’s lab animal facilities? The practice of incinerating waste continues in many facilities today simply because incineration has been used for years. Some of these older incinerators continue to function adequately, but some are becoming increasingly unreliable, and some have high maintenance costs. All incinerators have high operational costs in terms of energy and maintenance compared to newer technology waste disposal systems. Users have claimed values as high as $.50 to $.75 per pound. Another fact of today’s world is a lab’s liability when carting waste to a landfill site or an incinerator off-site. The liability of that waste lies with the originator, the lab, forever. In today’s litigious business world, liability becomes an important consideration. Many facilities now find themselves planning for alternative means of waste disposal.

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Figure 1 represents a logical approach to this quandary of what to do with bio-waste output from the many animal research and veterinary education facilities worldwide. The methods commonly used for waste disposal are:

1. Incinerator on-site
2. Transport to landfill
3. Transport to external incinerator or contract with waste processing company
4. Autoclave
5. Tissue Digester using Alkaline Hydrolysis process

Each of these methods will be explored in more detail here to minimize the perplexity of the alternatives.