FIGURE 2-3 Medical waste composition. Data from AHA 1993.

Typically, in hospitals today, about 15% of the total hospital waste is “red-bag” waste—waste that is considered infectious, and so must be incinerated or otherwise sterilized to prevent the spread of disease (AWMA 1994). However, some hospitals arbitrarily treat as much as 90% of their waste as red bag, apparently due to a lack of standard practices in health-care facilities for separating wastes that are truly red-bag from other waste. A 1992 study of New York City medical waste determined that much of the waste put into red bags did not qualify as red-bag waste and that much waste placed in brown bags should have been put into red bags. It was determined that the amount of red-bag waste can fall to less than 5% of the total when proper procedures are followed (Waste-Tech 1991). Such procedures include segregating recyclable material and compostable material (such as cafeteria food waste), implementing purchasing procedures that reduce the use of disposable material (for example, by installing electric hand dryers to replace or augment paper towels), and educating personnel to correctly dispose of waste as infectious or noninfectious. The study indi-