Environmental Management in Healthcare: Challenges and Solutions for Hazardous Waste at the UMC Utrecht

Within the UMC Utrecht, a lot of hazardous waste is created daily, a large part of which occurs in the laboratories. We use protocols for dealing with hazardous waste, in line with our environmental permit and our ISO 14001 certification. We have extensive waste protocols and use a registration tool for hazardous substances to ensure safety and traceability.

Nevertheless, challenges remain, for example in the area of communication and awareness within the organization. It is essential that all employees are aware of the applicable protocols and the importance of safe disposal of hazardous waste. Another point of attention is the management of wastewater, where monitoring and compliance with the protocols are necessary. We strive to ensure that internal communication runs smoothly and is optimized in order to achieve increasingly safer and more sustainable processing of hazardous waste.

Speaker: Jan Griffioen and Joyce van der Peet, UMC Utrecht