Dive Brief:
- Stericycle announced the opening of a nearly $110 million medical waste incinerator project in McCarran, Nevada, on Friday.
- The 110,000-square-foot facility is regulated under the hospital, medical and infectious waste incinerator category. The company said it designed and engineered the facility with technologies meant to exceed some environmental standards and save energy.
- The new facility will accept material from hospitals and healthcare systems in the Western U.S. The site also has a Shred-it baling facility as part of the company’s document destruction business.
Dive Insight:
The facility aims to address what Stericycle says is a growing demand for medical waste management offerings in the region. Such demand is driven partly by “evolving federal, state and local regulations for proper pharmaceutical and medical waste disposal,” it said in a release.
Environmental compliance is a major priority for the new incinerator, according to Stericycle. The company’s incinerator operations and building plans have faced pushback from environmental groups in the past, particularly at a previous location near Salt Lake City.
That facility received a $2.3 million state fine for air emission violations as part of a 2014 settlement, and it later closed in 2022. The company also settled a related case with the U.S. EPA in 2021, which led to a $600,000 civil penalty and an agreement to spend at least $2 million on low-emissions buses for a local school district…