With the Covid, perhaps you asked yourself the question, but what do hospitals do with their waste, in particular infectious? For the moment, they are incinerated but a Mons company offers an alternative.
For twenty years, infectious waste (known as B2) from Walloon and Brussels hospitals has been transported to the Thumaide incinerator, in the entity of Belœil. This incinerator, managed by the Ipalle intermunicipal company, also processes some non-hazardous hospital waste. “On average, this represents 20,000 tonnes of non-hazardous waste and 8,000 tonnes of infectious waste, out of the 400,000 tonnes of waste incinerated each year at Thumaide” explains Laurent Dupont, Chairman of Ipalle’s Management Committee.
For hospitals, this represents a cost of 400 euros per tonne. But the intermunicipal company has carried out a pilot experiment with the CHWapi, the Center hospitalier de Wallonie picarde, to encourage it to sort as much waste as possible at source, that is to say on the hospital site itself, before they are possibly contaminated. The experience has proven itself and other hospitals are inspired by it.
However, during the Covid period, the volume of infectious waste sent to Thumaide was much greater. “Three more time” says Laurent Dupont. “We had to increase our teams. It was very tense, and what more in a stressful context, given the risks and the fear generated by the virus”.
Concretely, waste from hospitals arrives by truck in airtight containers, identified with a barcode. They are then automatically transported, without ever being opened, to the incinerator furnace to be destroyed there.
“They are burned at a temperature of around 1100 to 1150 degrees. European legislation still imposes a temperature of 850 degrees for two seconds for the fumes” explains the Chairman of the Ipalle Management Committee. And to insist, at the same time, on the energy recovery of the waste burned in the incinerator thanks to the production of electricity “for almost half of the population of Picardy Wallonia”.
