188体育

You must classify the聽waste your business produces聽before it is collected, disposed of or recovered.

You must do this to identify:

• if the waste is hazardous or not
• which controls apply to the movement of the waste - this is to prevent harm to people and the environment

Offensive waste

鈥極ffensive waste鈥� is non-clinical waste that鈥檚 non-infectious and does not contain pharmaceutical or chemical substances, but may be unpleasant to anyone who comes into contact with it.

	Examples	Waste status	Human healthcare	Animal healthcare
Healthcare offensive waste	Outer dressings and protective clothing like masks, gowns and gloves that are contaminated with body fluids, and sterilised laboratory waste	Non-hazardous	18 01 04	18 02 03
Municipal offensive waste	Hygiene waste and sanitary protection like nappies and incontinence pads	Non-hazardous	20 01 99	20 01 99

You must segregate healthcare offensive waste from both clinical and mixed municipal wastes.

If you鈥檝e produced more than 7kg of municipal offensive waste, or have more than one bag in a collection period, you must segregate it from any mixed municipal waste.

If you鈥檝e produced less, you can dispose of your municipal offensive waste in your mixed municipal waste (鈥榖lack bag鈥�). Use classification code 20 03 01.

Plaster and similar wastes

Most plaster waste is non-infectious.

It should be kept separately from any plaster waste that鈥檚 infectious, which must be placed in the bagged infectious clinical waste stream.

	Waste status	Human healthcare	Animal healthcare
Plaster and similar wastes, for example from dentistry and fracture clinics	Non-hazardous	18 01 04	18 02 03

Waste medicines

A medicine is considered to be cytotoxic or cytostatic for waste classification purposes if it鈥檚 any of the following:

• acutely toxic
• carcinogenic
• mutagenic
• toxic for reproduction

	Waste status	Human healthcare	Animal healthcare
Cytotoxic and cytostatic medicines	Hazardous	18 01 08*	18 02 07*
Other medicines	Non-hazardous	18 01 09	18 02 08

Household medicines returned to a community pharmacy should be coded as follows:

• cytotoxic and cytostatic medicines: 20 01 31*
• other medicines: 20 01 32

Sharps and related waste

	Waste status	Human healthcare	Animal healthcare
Cytotoxic and cytostatic contaminated	Hazardous	18 01 08* and 18 01 03*	18 02 07* and 18 02 02*
Other medicinally contaminated	Hazardous	18 01 03* and 18 01 09	18 02 02* and 18 02 08
Non-medicinally contaminated	Hazardous	18 01 03*	18 02 02*

Anatomical waste

	Waste status	Human healthcare	Animal healthcare
Not chemically preserved - infectious	Hazardous	18 01 03*	18 02 02*
Not chemically preserved - non-infectious	Non-hazardous	18 01 02	18 02 03
Chemically preserved - infectious or non-infectious	Hazardous	18 01 06* and 18 01 02*/03	18 02 05* and 18 02 02*/03

Bagged clinical waste

You must only put waste items that are both infectious and chemically contaminated (for example some samples and diagnostic kits) in the yellow bag waste stream.

	Waste status	Human healthcare	Animal healthcare
Infectious clinical waste (no chemicals or pharmaceuticals) - orange bag	Hazardous	18 01 03*	18 02 02*
Infectious clinical waste - yellow bag	Hazardous	18 01 03* and 18 01 06*	18 02 02* and 18 02 05*

Laboratory chemicals and photochemicals

You must classify photochemicals and film, including X-ray related products, with codes from chapter 9 of the waste code section in the聽technical guidance on waste.

	Waste status	Human healthcare	Animal healthcare
Other chemicals - hazardous	Hazardous	18 01 06*	18 02 05*
Other chemicals - non-hazardous	Non-hazardous	18 01 07	18 02 06

How to classify other wastes

Check the聽guidance on the safe management of healthcare waste聽for more information about classifying clinical and healthcare waste.

Or check the聽technical guidance on waste, which lists all of the waste codes and how to apply them.

Get advice from a specialist waste contractor if you are not sure what code to use for your waste.

For more information, contact the Environment Agency.