Opticians and Eye Clinic Waste Management

• Types of eye clinic waste
• How to manage waste in an opticians
• Bins for eye clinic waste

Opticians must abide by the Environmental Protection Act 1990 to manage waste safely, legally, and responsibly. As a business, any rubbish your eye clinic produces will class as commercial waste. You have a duty of care to ensure this is segregated, stored, removed, and disposed of properly.

Start by conducting a waste audit to assess what types and volumes of waste you create regularly. Then you can use this information to build an effective waste management plan that covers everything from how and where waste from your opticians will be stored to who will remove it and the costs involved.

Ensure you have a range of bins in place across your practice to store all waste. These should be close to the specific waste production point and of a suitable size to store the volume of each waste type produced. This prevents overflowing bins and potential hygiene issues from developing.

You must arrange for a licensed waste carrier to remove the bins full of commercial waste from your opticians. It’s your responsibility to check they’re authorised and use the correct disposal method. You should receive a duty of care certificate confirming the safe disposal of your waste.

All bins from your opticians will be removed by licensed waste carriers and transported to a nearby waste management facility. It’s then sorted into waste streams based on the material and sent for further processing and disposal away from landfill. What happens to the waste from your optometrist practice depends on its type and any relevant regulations.

These are some common disposal methods for various types of waste from opticians:

• Incineration – any hazardous waste (including some clinical and pharmaceutical waste) will likely be incinerated in line with the hazardous waste regulations. This ensures the safe disposal of such waste to eliminate any risk of spreading infection or harming human or environmental health through exposure.
• Chemical treatment – some medical waste may be sent for chemical treatment so it can be reused in the future, such as certain types of sharps waste. This removes any infectious elements so the items can be reused safely.
• Recycling – any paper, cardboard, and recyclable packaging (such as aluminium drinks cans and some plastics) will be recycled. Glass from old pairs of spectacles should also be recycled as glass is infinitely recyclable. The plastic or metal frames may also be turned into new plastic or metal products.