SITA Environmental Solutions is refusing to accept residual waste from SteriHealth’s medical waste treatment plant at its Taylors Road landfill in Melbourne, pending confirmation from the company and EPA Victoria that the waste does not contain materials that could endanger SITA’s staff. The problem stems from a contract change in Adelaide that has raised concerns about unsorted medical waste being inappropriately treated.

Last October Inside Waste’s older sister publication, WME Environment Business Magazine, revealed some Victorian businesses including funeral homes and medical clinics had been kept in the dark as their clinical waste disposal contracts changed hand.

The problem was generators used to their wastes being incinerated – a treatment suitable for managing all clinical and related wastes – were not informed that a portion of their waste would instead be sent to a newer, alternative treatment facility that is suitable for destroying sharps – which make up the bulk of medical waste – but is not suitable for destroying other materials, such as body parts or pharmaceuticals.

Despite assurances by EPA Victoria that its audits showed no cross contamination of yellow sharps bins delivered to SteriHealth’s alternative treatment facility, several industry players claimed this was a matter of good luck, not good management, and called for stronger policing of the medical waste disposal market.

That WME cover story, A bloody mess: the state of clinical waste, also revealed regulators turning a blind eye to some of the nation’s most dangerous waste materials being carted from WA to lower-order disposal facilities in Victoria, and flagged problems with cross-border leakage “unfolding in SA”.

Those problems came to a head in February when Transpacific Cleanaway informed Veolia – which had been incinerating about 700 bins of Adelaide’s medical waste each month – that from March the material would instead be sent to SteriHealth for disposal in Melbourne.

Adelaide hospitals operate a single-bin medical waste system because, to date, all material has been incinerated.

SteriHealth has two treatment options in Melbourne, an incinerator as well as an alternative treatment plant that shreds and chemical sterilises material.

Stabilised residuals from that chemical treatment plant can be disposed as general waste and had, for more than a decade, been buried at SITA’s Taylor’s Road landfill. But speculation some of Adelaide’s unsorted medical waste might be fed through the plant has this month seen landfill manager Daniel Fyfe suspend the receipt of this waste.

“Until we receive confirmation from the EPA and/or SteriHealth that it doesn’t contain pharmaceuticals and other materials that may not have been separated through collection processes in South Australia… we don’t want to put our staff at risk,” he said.

“[It’s] a small volume, but I can’t take the risk because of the duty of care I have to my staff.”


The April issue of WME magazine, due out next week, contains further details of the SA situation, and proposals to reform the clinical waste industry by better aligning regulations with the philosophy of the Basel Convention on the international transport of hazardous waste.

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