“The treatment of hospital waste. What we can do today, what we must know how to do tomorrow” is the topic of the speech that Francesco Crotti, technical director of Cisa Group, held on October 7th at the seminar on “Post-Covid Hospital: flexible, green, sustainable”, promoted by Gutenberg, organiser of the Mediterranean Forum in Healthcare, as part of the Fiera del Levante, which took place in Bari in the last few days.

In particular, Crotti focused on the ecological and environmental benefits that derive from the use of the sterilization system for the on-site treatment of medical waste, designed by the Lucca-based company, since steam sterilization is now the recognized method for the inactivation of medical waste.

The CSSD can also be implemented into a mobile station called “sterili-station” which includes an actual system for the treatment of hospital waste, providing hospitals with an immediate plug and play solution, notably where time is essential and savings in terms of design and construction can be a crucial factor.

Hospital waste constitutes the highest cost for hospitals from both a financial and environmental point of view. Thanks to its full sterilization capability, together with waste shredding and storage, the hospital waste treatment system – as Crotti explained – allows a reduction in waste volume of up to 75-80%, with a clear reduction in management costs, in particular transport costs.

During the workshop, the analysis carried out by Pricewaterhouse Coopers’ research department, directed by Sandro Bicocchi, highlighted the savings at national level and for standard facilities.

In particular, it was shown how the new technologies that allow medical waste to be treated directly inside the facilities where it is produced, through a sterilization process which can then allow for the waste to be disposed of as household waste, ensure significant savings in terms of costs and environmental impact. Assuming that all infectious waste produced by healthcare institutions is currently treated using traditional methods, the changeover to these new generation technologies would lead to savings of over € 100 million for the national economic system, and over € 430,000 for a healthcare institution receiving an average of 600 patients a day. The costs associated with the disposal of infectious waste would fall by an average of-59%.

At the Fiera del Levante, Cisa Group presented the robot that sanitises environments using UV technology, eliminating 99% of bacteria. As a sponsor of the event, Cisa also provided a sanitising gateway, a mobile solution which, positioned at the exhibition’s entrance, allowed visitors to sanitise their hands and shoe soles, and measure their body temperature. A device that is especially useful in environments, such as the Bari event, with thousands of people coming in and out.