Clinical Waste Facts
Every country creates high volumes of clinical waste daily in its hospitals, care homes, and other healthcare facilities. In the UK, the NHS generates around 600,000 tonnes of waste each year. This includes clinical waste as well as other streams such as plastics, cardboard, and food waste.
Managing clinical waste costs millions of pounds each year and has a significant impact on our planet, as lots of it isn’t recyclable. Specific stats for how much clinical waste is produced and the ways it’s managed vary around the world. The wealth of a country often has a direct impact.
Gain insight into how much clinical waste the world produces, where it comes from, and what happens to it. These clinical waste facts and statistics highlight the scale of the issue and why reducing medical waste where possible is so important.
Medical waste statistics
The amount of medical waste produced around the world has increased greatly over the past 30 years. This has a big environmental impact due to the ways it’s disposed of and managed. Lots of medical rubbish is incinerated because of its infectious nature and potentially hazardous characteristics.
Learn how much clinical waste the world generates and why managing it safely is so important with these medical waste statistics:
- 15% of all waste the healthcare sector generates is hazardous
- High-income countries produce an average of up to 0.5 kg of hazardous waste per hospital bed each day
- Low-income countries generate an average of 0.2 kg of hazardous waste per hospital bed daily
- Around 16 billion injections are administered globally every year, which creates lots of sharps waste
- It’s estimated at least 2 million people worldwide die each year due to illnesses caused by unmanaged medical waste
- Operating rooms create 30% of a hospital or healthcare facility’s total waste – and more than 60% of its specially regulated medical waste
- European hospitals generate around six million tonnes of medical waste annually
- The European bio-medical waste management market is worth an estimated US $23.07 billion in 2025 – expected to reach US $28.90 billion by 2030
Healthcare waste statistics
The healthcare sector covers a wide area as it goes beyond hospitals to include places like nursing homes, blood banks, and rehabilitation centres. These can produce a wide array of waste streams from medical rubbish to packaging waste. As such, the statistics around healthcare waste can vary.
Get an idea of how much waste healthcare facilities and activities generate with these healthcare waste statistics:
- The healthcare industry is responsible for around 4% of global carbon emissions
- NHS providers in England produce approximately 156,000 tonnes of clinical waste every year
- This is sent to high temperature incineration (HTI) or for alternative treatment (AT)
- NHS England expects clinical waste to increase at an annual rate of 3% for the foreseeable future
- Data indicates that 1 in 3 healthcare facilities globally do not safely manage healthcare waste
- Only 61% of hospitals had basic healthcare waste services in 2021 (according to WHO and UNICEF)
- Research published in the Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management claims that healthcare waste has increased globally by 2.11% annually
- More than 50% of non-hazardous waste from hospitals is paper, cardboard, and plastics
- Health sectors in the USA, Australia, England, and Canada combined produce around 748 million metric tonnes of greenhouse gases every year
Get rid of your clinical waste responsibly
Organisations that produce any type and volume of clinical waste must separate it from other materials and store it safely before arranging removal by licensed waste carriers. This reduces the risk of contamination and exposure to potentially harmful materials while ensuring you comply with all the relevant regulations.
At Business Waste, we provide free bins to help your organisation save money on your clinical waste management. There are no rental or delivery fees – you only pay for collection. A wide range of medical bins, bags, and containers in various shapes and sizes are available with daily, weekly, or fortnightly collections.
Get a free no-obligation quote for clinical waste collection anywhere in the UK today. Speak to one of our friendly team for a bespoke price or further information – call 0800 211 8390 or contact us online.
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Published 18th February 2025 by Graham Matthews.