Medical waste items may contaminate an entire bin of acceptable recyclable materials and, if collected, pose a significant danger to the health and safety of the employees that collect and process recycling.
Examples of medical waste items that have been found inappropriately mixed in with recyclable materials at the Recycling Center include plastic intravenous fluid (IV) bags, plastic respirator and medical equipment tubing, CPAP masks and syringes (including sharps used for injections and plastic syringes used for flushing IV lines). These items should never be placed into blue recycling bins for recycling collection.
Information on how to recycle or dispose of medical sharps and syringes is available here.
For a complete list of items that can be recycled in the County’s recycling program is available at on the DEP website or by calling 3-1-1 or 240-777-0311.
