Medisort - healthcare waste solutions

This Knowledge Transfer Partnership developed waste treatment and material recovery processes to facilitate the development of novel products from bulk offensive waste.

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Medisort healthcare waste solutions

Medisort collects, processes and disposes of healthcare waste in the South East of England, including single use instruments, sharps, medicinal waste and absorbent hygiene products from a range of customers. A significant proportion of these products are children’s nappies and adult incontinence products.

Medisort aim to deliver a bespoke service to all customers which maximises segregation, ensures full compliance, delivers cost reductions and reduces environmental impact.

The challenge

By embedding specialist knowledge, this Knowledge Transfer Partnership project aims to develop waste treatment and material recovery processes, enhancing segregation and recyclability of bulk offensive waste materials from the healthcare sector. These new processes will lead to the development of novel products and will involve embedding analytical chemistry expertise, incorporating microbiology and biomaterials expertise. The new bulk product will be taken to market, along the principles of the circular economy, valorising the waste stream.

Our approach

Following a successful capability study, undertaken through support from the university's Green Growth Platform (now known as Clean Growth), Medisort sought to collaborate on this strategic project with the university, accessing the expertise brought by the academic team to successfully develop this new capability in the business.

The project team will utilise diverse, but complementary, expertise in analytical chemistry, microbiology and biomaterials to initially design and test appropriate separation and recovery techniques, including decontamination protocols at laboratory scale.

This will inform the subsequent steps to design and test prototype equipment and set up a permanent laboratory on site, work with the supply chain and develop a marketing strategy for the novel products.

Project outcomes

Expected outputs:

Improving segregation of materials to increase the amount of recyclable waste, reducing costs associated with recycling and incineration
Increased turnover from new waste treatment and material recovery process
New income stream from launch of novel products.

Outputs so far:

Testing has been done on using waste products to recover soil damaged by heavy metals
Investigation has started in the use of cleansed recovered materials product to create new products.

Quick facts

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs) is a world-leading programme that helps businesses succeed by connecting them to the UK's rich academic resources.
KTPs are a partnership between the business seeking expertise, a university or college and a recently qualified graduate – known as an Associate.
The graduate (Associate) carries out a strategic project for the business, working with an expert university academic. The Associate works from within the business, under the guidance of the academic, supervised by the company and the university.
Each partnership lasts from twelve months to three years.
Up to 67% of the project costs are government-funded via Innovate UK.

If you would like to talk with our KTP team, please submit your enquiry here.