Veolia has been awarded a contract under a Crown Commercial Services Framework to provide healthcare waste management services for NHS Test and Trace’s new Rosalind Franklin Laboratory in Royal Leamington Spa.
Under the terms of the deal, Veolia’s teams will self-deliver a fully comprehensive service covering all aspects of the waste management process at the facility which is designed to process hundreds of thousands of Covid-19 tests per day, and operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. By using specialist treatment and disposal facilities the compliant treatment route will maximise the energy recovery, and lower carbon emissions.
The service will cover all aspects of the waste management process, from the initial collection at the point of production and on-site transfer and consolidation, through to off-site transportation, treatment, and disposal. The laboratory waste will primarily be disposed of at Veolia’s Energy Recovery Facility in Tyseley and help supply green energy for Birmingham.
According to the global resource management company, significant emissions reductions can be achieved by using energy recovery facilities, with recent successful demonstrations showing that clinical waste can be safely and compliantly destroyed and achieve more than 60 per cent reductions in carbon emissions compared to other commonly applied treatments.
Veolia will also collect and treat waste at Veolia’s Empire Treatment Plant and Norwood facilities on a daily basis, including the recovery of liquid solvents and transformation into secondary liquid fuel. This process is another way in which Veolia creates green energy from waste by producing a blended fuel, which is used as a replacement to fossil fuel, in the manufacture of cement.
This new UK service works alongside the other specialist Covid-19 services introduced by the company over the last year. These include a compliant way of safely collecting, containing, and treating potentially contaminated PPE, Covid-19 disinfection services designed to ensure compliant treatment for businesses prior to reopening, manufacturing hand sanitiser, and adapting existing infrastructure to treat and dispose of potentially contaminated wastes.
In order to understand how FMs have navigated their way through the last year and their plans for meeting stringent waste and recycling targets we’ve posed a series of questions – aided by the advice and experience of our editorial steering committee.
The results of the 2021 survey will be published in FMJ magazine and form the basis of a white paper co-written by FMJ and the experts at Grundon on how to approach waste and recycling strategies.
To take part in the survey click here.