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.
The McCarran site, like other HWIMI facilities, must operate under state and federal emissions standards. According to Stericycle, the facility has the “best available” air pollution control system, along with auxiliary systems to “ensure uninterruptible services during power outages.”
“We have set a new standard for the future of the regulated medical waste industry by going beyond today’s air and water standards to reduce our impact on the environment,” said Jim Ferguson, Stericycle’s senior vice president of engineering, in a statement.
In an April interview, Chief Commercial Officer Cory White called the McCarran project “critically important to our sustainability story,” in part because its location will help reduce the miles fleets must travel to service West Coast customers.
The facility will also generate steam energy from the waste treatment process, which Stericycle says will be used to power operations such as heating water for the container washers, a move to avoid using natural gas.
Officials also touted a plant process water reuse system which is designed so that the facility will not release any industrial wastewater discharge. The facility will also use reclaimed water and treat it on site.
“Leveraging decades of experience, our McCarran facility was purposefully designed to protect public health and the environment now and into the future and will serve as a blueprint for potential future operations,” said CEO Cindy Miller in a statement.
Stericycle says the McCarran facility will employ about 80 people. It took an estimated 300 local contractors and tradespeople to build the facility, some of whom “will continue to support the ongoing maintenance of the facility.” The company also said it will work with American Wild Horse Conservation to train employees on “how to best protect and interact with horses and other wildlife that live in the area.”
The opening comes as WM is imminently set to acquire Stericycle for $7.2 billion, a deal the companies say could close in Q4. WM has previously said the deal will help the company expand its healthcare waste offerings and offer customers a broader range of environmental services.
Stericycle shareholders approved the deal in August, and it cleared U.S. antitrust review in September. The deal is now under review in Canada. Plans were also recently announced to sell Stericycle’s Spain and Portugal assets to Urbaser.
