Many healthcare entities are already applying modern logistics management methods as a result of constantly increasing cost pressures and competition, which force the creation of new concepts to meet ever-higher quality requirements regarding the cost-effective supply of medical resources to healthcare units and the disposal of medical waste by them. Practice shows that waste disposal in almost all segments of the healthcare sector is still carried out through various, relatively poorly coordinated processes, which means that there is still significant potential for rationalization to be exploited. Ecologistics can play an important role in this effort.
Concept and essence of ecologistics
Ecologistics is a relatively new concept and refers to the management of waste material streams in the economy and the flows of information associated with them. The above statement is illustrated in Figure 1.
Ecologistics primarily deals with organizing and optimizing waste disposal chains, thereby ensuring effective waste management in accordance with technical-process principles and environmental protection regulatory and legal requirements. It enables technical and organizational decisions to be made that minimize the negative environmental impact of processes occurring in logistics supply chains [1]. The term ecologistics was used, among others, by Prof. Zbigniew Korzeń from the Wrocław University of Science and Technology, according to whom waste ecologistics is a term describing an integrated system that:
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is based on the concept of managing recirculatory flows of waste material streams in the economy and the flows of information associated with them
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ensures the readiness and ability to effectively collect, segregate, process, and reuse waste according to adopted technical and process principles that meet environmental protection standards and legal requirements
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enables technical and organizational decisions to be made towards reducing (minimizing) those negative environmental impacts that accompany the implementation of supply, processing, production, distribution, and service processes in logistics supply chains [2].
Motives for implementing medical waste ecologistics in healthcare facilities
Within ecologistics, a special place is beginning to be occupied by medical waste ecologistics, as the issue of their proper collection, removal, and disposal currently constitutes one of the significant problems recognized by sanitary-epidemiological and environmental protection services. The current state of medical waste management in the country is unsatisfactory. It often happens that they end up in municipal landfills without proper protection. Incinerators used in hospitals for medical waste do not have dust removal or flue gas cleaning equipment (few facilities are equipped only with dust removal devices, such as cyclones). Furthermore, the incineration of medical waste in hospital boiler rooms not adapted for this purpose is common. All this causes medical waste to pose an increasing threat to the natural environment, and the main risk associated with its generation is linked to the possibility of environmental contamination with pathogens and pathogenic bacteria. The problems of their disposal are therefore primarily related to the need to counteract biological (epidemiological) contamination potentially caused by them.
The article comes from the magazine “Logistyka” 1/2008.