Pharmaceutical waste

Pharmaceutical waste, or ‘medicinal waste’, refers to any waste that is arriving from outdated drugs or medicines that requires disposal.

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Types of Pharmaceutical Waste 

Pharmaceutical waste, or ‘medicinal waste’, refers to any waste that is arriving from outdated drugs or medicines that requires disposal. Through our many years of experience supporting healthcare customers with this waste, Reconomy is aware of just how crucial it is to provide a robust segregation system when handling large amounts of pharmaceutical waste. Typically, waste arriving from pharmaceutical practices will require segregation into two different containers, which we label: medicinal, cytotoxic, and cytostatic.

Explore more about these labels below: 

Medicinal waste

Using the colour-coded segregation system, medicinal waste will always be found in containers with a blue lid on. This waste stream is for all medicines or outdated drugs that are classified in the ‘non-hazardous’ category, posing no risk to containing hazardous properties. This waste will always require disposal by incineration and cannot be recycled. The blue lid on the containers will help pharmaceutical practices separate this medicinal waste from anything that could contain cytotoxic or cytostatic properties, hazardous elements of pharmaceutical waste that will cause contamination.

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Cytotoxic or cytostatic waste

Classified in containers with a purple lid, waste that contains cytotoxic or cytostatic properties will always require segregation from common medicinal waste. Reconomy commonly finds that this type of waste arrives from used needles or syringes that have been used in complex treatments on either humans and animals.

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Clinical waste disposal

Explore Reconomy's other clinical waste services

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