We aim to assist recyclers, including haulers, material recovery facilities, and reprocessors, in better understanding the value of healthcare plastics. Through work focused on material handling training and optimal reuse applications, HPRC helps recyclers minimize risk and maximize market value.
Resources
For Recyclers
Featured Resource
Advanced Recycling Research
HPRC recently completed research to explore advanced recycling technologies — including purification, decomposition, and conversion — in an effort to discover if they could address the healthcare plastics waste stream in a meaningful way.
Healthcare Plastics Guidance for Recyclers
This complete overview of healthcare plastics recycling is specifically geared toward recyclers, laying out common materials, strategies for working with hospitals, processing techniques, and potential end markets.
Healthcare Recycling Vendor Directory
This free, public, interactive directory is designed to help facilitate geography-specific collaboration between healthcare facilities and recycling vendors interested in their material streams. Find out who is recycling what near you!
Flexible Plastics Recycling Pilot Study
HPRC completed a flexible plastics recyclability assessment aimed at showing that, with proper controls, flexible packaging can be successfully segregated from the OR waste stream without fear of hazardous material contamination.
Healthcare Film Materials Testing
HPRC and Penn State completed preliminary testing to determine best practices for film recycling, blending, and sample preparation, mapping the impact of the hospital polymer film recycling stream composition on the physical properties of reprocessed polymer material.
Guiding Principles on Advanced Recycling
This document defines HPRC’s guiding principles regarding the use of advanced recycling technologies for healthcare plastics. These principles align with the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) Chemical Recycling Implementation Principles and encompass topics such as the most efficient use of technology, environment and human health safeguards, claims and chain of custody, complementary relationship with mechanical recycling and circular enablement. This guidance document compliments other HPRC work, including HPRC’s Design Guidance to enhance recyclability.