Clinical waste

Clinical waste is waste that consists wholly or partly of:

• human or animal tissue
• blood or bodily fluids
• sharps, including syringes, needles, finger pricking devices and lancets
• medicines or other pharmaceutical products
• swabs or dressings

Household clinical waste

There are certain types of waste arising from home treatments i.e. home dialysis or infectious waste that requires specialist collection and treatment, please contact your district council for advice.

Incontinence waste (nappies and soiled pads), colostomy and stoma bags do not need specialist collection and should be double-bagged and placed in your residual wheeled bin for normal collection.

Sharps and needles should never be placed in any wheeled bin and should always be securely contained (in a sharps container) for removal by your healthcare provider or returned to your health care centre. We can arrange collection of household clinical waste but there may be a charge. Please contact customer services for details.

You can dispose of your sharps in yellow boxes at the following pharmacies:

Reporting discarded needles and syringes on public land

If you find discarded needles or syringes in a public place, do not touch them to avoid injury, but contact the Customer Services team who will arrange the safe removal using the appropriate equipment.

East Suffolk Services Ltd will aim to remove them within one working day of it being reported.

Changes to the collection of medical sharps

In February 2018, NHS England informally instructed the council that it intended to make changes to the waste contracts that governed the collection of medical sharps (needles and syringes) from community pharmacies.

In short, returned sharps would no longer be accepted at community pharmacies or GP surgeries from patients who self-medicate (e.g. diabetics self-medicating with insulin). A formal letter outlining this change was received in August 2018.

Historically sharps from self-medicating households have been accepted at pharmacies and therefore the Suffolk local authorities have had little or no need to do so.

Local authorities have no obligation to collect sharps generated at a GP surgery or Pharmacy, nor from households where medication is administered by a health care professional.

However, we do have any responsibility to provide a collection service for those patients who produce sharps via home use.

The council identified the following 3 likely impacts of the proposed changes:

• Increased costs to the taxpayer
• Confusion for the householder
• Increased health and safety concerns (e.g. chaotic disposal and a greater risk of needlestick injury to waste collection and MRF operatives)

As a result, the Chair of the SWP wrote to the Secretary of State for Health and the Chief Executive of the NHS outlining our concerns. Whilst a response was received from the NHS merely restating their position, no formal response has been received to date from the Minister nor the Department of Health and Social Care. Our letters were also shared with other Local Authorities and Local Authority bodies (i.e. Local Government Association).

Commercial clinical waste

East Suffolk Services Ltd (ESSL) provides commercial waste collections for businesses producing clinical and offensive healthcare waste within the former Suffolk Coastal area.