Clinical waste
Clinical waste bags
When using clinical waste bags, make sure that you do not overfill the bag. The bag should be just over half full.
All bags must be tied before they can be collected. Store your bags in a secure, dry place away from children and animals before putting them out for collection.
Use your waste bag for:
- wound dressings
- swabs
- incontinence pads
- stoma bags - these must be emptied into the toilet before placing in the clinical bag items used to dispose of urine, faeces and other bodily secretions and excretions
You must not place any sharp objects or syringes into clinical waste bags These items must be disposed of in a sharps container.
Sharps container
A sharps container is usually a yellow box with a yellow lid. Some sharps containers have different colour lids, these can mean different things. We can only deal with yellow lids, if you have a container with a different colour lid then you will need to return it to the place that you got it.
Use your sharps container for:
- syringe needles
- sharps
- broken glass
- any other sharp item
Please ensure that the box's closure device is locked shut before collection. Store your box(s) in a secure, dry place away from children and animals before collection.
Collection
We collect clinical waste bags and sharps container free of charge from residents’ homes and offer a paid for service to businesses, care and residential homes.
To arrange a collection please call the contact centre on 020 8554 5000.
Once you are registered for clinical collections, we will let you know when we will collect your bags or containers. Depending on your needs we will arrange either a scheduled or occasional collection.
Whatever we collect we will replace. For example, if you leave two boxes and three bags with medical waste out for collection, we will replace it with two new boxes and three new bags.
Missed clinical waste collection
To report a missed commercial clinical waste collection , please use our missed commercial clinical waste collection form.
To report a missed domestic clinical waste collection , please use our missed domestic clinical waste collection form.
