Recycling of medical packaging

[Dianejt]

It drives me bonkers to see all the" trash" that is tossed into the landfills with life with medical issues is part of our life. I do try to separate all paper from plastic & recycling what  I can. I realize the reasoning for keeping everything sterile. What can we do to not fill our planet with all this waste? Especially when my hubby is in the hospital there is no recyling even attempted.

[totosidney]

I do hemodialysis at home 6 days a week (NxStage) and there are literally tons of plastics thrown out per year. There is a lot of cardboard and that is easy to recycle. The other stuff is treated as medical waste, not trash. I have to rinse the throw-away stuff with bleach just to get the garbage men to take it. There seems little chance you could get any recycler to take it.  ..sid

[Rerun]

We use to reuse our lines and dialyzer.  As long as they passed the tests before we went on it was a go.  We would fill the lines and dialyzer with "Formaldehyde" to sterilize them.  Yes, Formaldehyde!  I am still alive so I see no reason why we ever switched except the dialysis centers could make more money by tossing everything after a single use.

I don't know why?