Medical Waste

Home Generated Medical Waste includes syringes, sharps, and other medical waste such as bandages, dressings, or medical bags that are generated from home medical use, and not administered by a licensed healthcare professional. Home Generated bandages, dressings or medical bags should be placed in a separate container, sealed, and clearly labeled before being placed in the regular household trash. To learn how to dispose of syringes and sharps, please see the Needles & syringes page of the A to Z Guide.

Regulated Medical Waste (RMW) are materials generated in the medical industry or by a health-care professional while in your home. Regulated Medical Waste must be handled by a certified medical waste hauler. For questions about how businesses and institutions should dispose of regulated medical waste, contact Deb Pierce at Debra.Pierce@ vermont.gov. RMW includes:

• Pathological Waste (Body parts and tissues)
• Human blood, blood products, and other body fluids–any liquid waste including blood, blood products, or items saturated or dripping with blood or other potentially infectious body fluids
• Cultures and shocks of infectious agents
• Sharps–objects that are capable of cutting or penetrating the skin and inducing subdermal inoculation of an infectious agent. This includes needles, Pasteur pipettes and scalpel blades. Discarded unused Sharps are also considered RMW.
• Animal waste–animal carcasses, body parts, bedding and other items from animals that are known or suspected by either the Department of Health or the Department of Agriculture of being contaminated with organisms that can produce disease in humans; and that disposal by burial or other ordinarily acceptable means would not sufficiently reduce the risk of transmission of a disease to humans or other animals
• Chemotherapy waste
• Infectious isolation waste–biological waste and discarded materials contaminated with blood, body fluids, excretion, exudates or secretions from humans who are isolated to protect others from dangerous incommunicable diseases
• Biotechnological by-product effluents–any discarded preparation made from genetically altered living organisms.