SEATTLE (Recycling Monster): By recycling one million pounds of medical plastic, Brightmark LLC and Lewis Salvage, a recycling company situated in Warsaw, Indiana, have achieved a significant milestone in their strategic cooperation. The collaboration has prevented hazardous medical waste from ending up in landfills or incinerators.
The collaboration started at the end of July of last year. Since then, Brightmark's recycling initiatives have seen tremendous growth, as evidenced by the rise in recycling volumes from an initial 400,000 pounds to over 1 million pounds of plastic waste.
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Lewis Salvage's recycling program gathers medical plastics from orthopedic implant and medical device manufacturers and delivers them to the Brightmark Circularity Center in Ashley, Indiana, where they undergo processing and are converted into materials that are used to create useful and valuable circular products.
Due mostly to the increasing demand for clean, disposable devices and packaging, single-use medical plastics are one of the waste streams that is expanding. It is estimated that 14,000 tons of this type of garbage are produced daily by healthcare facilities in the United States. Remarkably, about one-fourth of these wastes are composed of plastics. Furthermore, less than 10% of plastics—including those used in the healthcare industry—are recycled in an ethical manner.