Carsten Dietsche good work

The interesting questionnaire, very good scientific work

Lt. Uhura, tie in the Universal Google Translator for English.

--pg.1

I ask for your help for a better refurbishing / recycling of medical devices.

I process the questions anonymously according to German data protection law on a server in Munich.

Dear Sirs,

my name is Carsten Dietsche (48 years). I do research on medical products at the Fernuniversität in Hagen, supervised by the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML, Dortmund. I want to help improve product availability during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even if you are not an: e Expert: in on refurbishing and recycling, your assessment is more important to me than on expert opinions. You can fill out this form online in around 20 minutes, also using your smartphone.

What is the point of taking part in this survey?

Refurbishing can cut costs and open up new business opportunities. The more people take part in this survey, the more precisely we can explore the opportunities together. Your advantage is that you get the evaluation of the questionnaire. I will also inform you about recycling activities: Which platforms can your company participate in?

My main interest in this nine-question survey is:

What economic framework is necessary in times of COVID-19 for better processing and recycling?

Questions 1 to 4) deal with the collection of old medical devices and the recovery of recyclates.

Question 5) includes the refurbishment of older devices to a current state in order to be able to sell them again.

Questions 6 to 7) deal with the recovery of ground plastic granulates for use in new products.

Then I ask questions 8 to 9) in relation to a legally required company policy aimed at recycling.

Thank you in advance for your answers. If you are interested in the evaluations, please contact me directly:

[email protected]

--pg.2

data protection

NOTE:

No names or email addresses of the participants are saved for this survey. Other data will not be passed on to third parties.

Answering the questionnaire is voluntary. Only the persons involved in the survey have access to the questionnaire and your data. I will interview you anonymously. The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and German law are implemented.

The names and contact details of those responsible for processing are:

Oliver Hinte (data protection officer)

Uwe Hofmann (deputy)

Universitätsstrasse 47, 58084 Hagen

58097 Hagen, Germany

Tel .: 02331 987 - 2511

Email: [email protected]

I will collect the following data along with your answers:

- IP address - the unique identifier of your computer at a certain point in time

- Referrer URL - address of the website from which you came to the survey

- Timing - start and end of your processing of the survey

- Cookie - to exclude repeated participation

The answers are anonymized. The operator and administrator of the database cannot establish a relationship between your answers and your participant data. Your data will only be used to enable this survey.

Do you agree to your data being saved? You have to answer this question, please.

Yes

No

--pg.3

Complement of the PolyCE H2020 project.

From the PolyCE project of the EU research framework program "Horizon 2020" I have adopted and adapted many questions.

The following is about medical devices for private consumers (Business to Consumer, B2C) such as B. Electronic household clinical thermometers. Recyclates from it are "post consumer" recyclates, among others. from "Green Dot" collections.

I also examine "post-industrial" recyclates that arise when producing commercially used devices (B2B, Business to Business): e. B. surgical instruments, dental treatment chairs.

Q1: Businesses and consumers play an important role in the production of recycled plastics, e.g. B. to win from electrical appliances.

To be successful at this, manufacturers should

1) Have a wide selection of products that contain post consumer and post industrial plastics

2) improve internal training and customer information on sustainability

3) Choose from a wide variety of socially and economically competitive options

Should the framework change in order to market more recycled plastics?

Which statements are true? (Multiple choice)

very relevant - I fully support the goals mentioned under 1) to 3)

rather relevant - we need legal framework conditions and incentives to market more products made from recycled plastics economically

Undecided - our customers are currently not ready to answer safety and quality-related questions, e.g. B. on post-consumer recyclates from the Green Dot.

rather not relevant - our customers are ready, but other actors in the value chain should gear their actions more towards sustainability than before

not relevant at all - there are more urgent problems that hinder the increased use of recycled plastics

Miscellaneous: .

Recyclates z. B. from old electrical appliances

For more refurbishing, commercial medical products (B2B) could be refurbished more in terms of quantity and quality. Manufacturers could use recycled materials more than before, based on the overall product: in car headlamp construction it was previously a maximum of 10%.

Old devices are often collected and pretreated in various ways: Large devices are often picked up in doctors' offices and taken together with white goods such as B. refrigerators, washing machines (possibly also together with old cars) dismantled separately in their own systems.

Smaller monitors, lights, etc. are often disposed of separately, e.g. B. via municipal building yards.

Q2: Each waste stream for medical devices contains different products with different compositions of materials. It is very difficult to separate these and to extract plastics (polymers) from treating hundreds of different types of medical devices.

Intelligent strategies for pre-sorting are based e.g. B. on materials and their properties. A pre-sorting facilitates the material separation z. B. in pre-treatment systems for electrical and other old devices.

What do you think of the following? (Multiple choice)

very relevant - intelligent pre-sorting should urgently be expanded

rather relevant - the pre-sorting should only take place at the level of a pre-treatment plant

Undecided - specialist companies should already pre-sort devices, e.g. B. on withdrawal

rather not relevant - consumer products would have to be laboriously pre-sorted due to lack of space on building yards, since citizens or employees have to be informed or additional permits are necessary

not relevant at all - there are also pressing problems that prevent more sustainable plastics

Miscellaneous:

--pg.4

Pre-treatment plants and their waste streams

Medical products are currently being collected, roughly pre-sorted and transported to pre-treatment facilities. Disposable surgical instruments often end up in incinerators for clinical waste.

Each medical device waste stream is different from the previous one. The treatment includes hundreds of different, colorfully mixed devices. The separation and recycling of different types and colors of plastics can therefore be very laborious.

Q3: At the moment, old electrical appliances are being collected and brought separately to pre-treatment plants. The collection takes place in predefined product groups, based on the material types and properties. Medical devices should increasingly be separated when they are returned, e.g. B. in specialist companies or shops.

If customers exchange their products 1: 1, the returned products should be stored in a pre-sorted manner. This can be useful for sales outlets that sell individual products or brands. This allows waste streams to be defined more clearly. Customers could also easily identify certain points of sale that are responsible for the disposal of medium-sized medical devices e.g. B. are suitable.

Please feel free to select multiple answers.

very relevant - points of sale should clearly mark the return options

rather relevant - but it would be more effective just to change the behavior of the customers: they usually only use the take-back through sales outlets for larger products

Undecided - however, there should be incentive programs for outlets to get them more involved

not very relevant - pre-sorting is difficult at building yards, as there is not enough space, employees and citizens have to be informed and additional permits are required

not relevant at all - there are pressing problems preventing sustainable plastics

Miscellaneous:

Transport to refurbishing etc. Put

The transport of electrical and other waste equipment to treatment or refurbishing centers is currently to be improved. The logistics are based on one-way trips, i.e. H. the loading of the vehicles might not be optimal, e.g. B. the loading areas of trucks on the way to the plant are not well used. Furthermore, there are often economically uninteresting empty journeys on the return journey.

Q4: There should be intermediate storage consolidation centers for transports, the task of which is to collect devices with the same waste streams and destinations.

Consolidation centers can also pre-sort: their staff is currently optimizing the amount of waste electrical equipment that has been collected. As a qualitative criterion, sorting according to waste streams of the same composition could be given greater consideration.

Multiple choices are possible here again.

very relevant - consolidation centers should pre-sort according to the same waste streams

rather relevant - consolidation centers can reduce transport costs and emissions through better truck loading

Undecided - new consolidation centers need new investments. B. for administration and theft protection - who pays for them?

rather not relevant - in some places approvals for consolidation centers are very complex (storage, logistics)

not relevant at all - there are more pressing problems preventing plastics from becoming sustainable

Miscellaneous:

--pg.5

question

Investigation results: Framework conditions can be changed in plastic pretreatment

On the one hand, it is difficult for presorters to achieve uniform grouped particle sizes. On the other hand, the ability of the pre-sorter depends on the technology used. Sorters need uniform groupings of the particles:

If shredder waste (gray, inseparable "fluff") mixes with the desired residual amount of recyclable plastics due to incorrect particle sizes, shredders cannot tell the difference between the two. This reduces the proceeds.

Q6: The PolyCE project showed that the introduction of clusters would be beneficial for a better quality of recyclates. A pretreatment should precede the treatment of devices: through newly thought out product groups based on the material types and properties.

Selected products should be separated from other waste: e.g. B. dental treatment chairs or disposable surgical instruments.

Please feel free to choose several options.

very relevant - selected products should be highlighted and separated from other waste

rather relevant - however, the separation is time-consuming and otherwise complex - therefore sales outlets for medical products and municipal recycling centers can handle this clustering very effectively

undecided - who should do this sorting and selection of products?

rather not relevant - it requires newly organized working methods, logistical efforts and available space

not relevant at all - there are pressing problems that prevent the sustainability of plastics

Miscellaneous:

question

Improvement of sorting techniques to increase profits

The companies that pre-treat waste electrical and electronic equipment do not specialize in plastics. In addition, the low average price of polymers means that plastics, in contrast to higher-quality metals, are often not the focus of recovery.

As a result, it is difficult for recyclers to select the most appropriate sorting techniques in order to generate profit from different materials.

Q7: In order to improve the quantity and quality of the plastic materials that are supplied to recycling facilities for the recovery of post-consumer recyclates, the following recommendations are made.

1) There should be standardized particle sizes (10 to 20 millimeters) as shredding results. Currently, the size depends heavily on the shredder used.

2) The number of steps in shredding should be reduced.

Please tick different options.

very relevant - standardized particle sizes (10 to 20 mm) bring additional benefits

rather relevant - in order to get such a small recycling granulate, plastics should stay longer in the shredder or additional steps for shredding should be introduced

Undecided - who should use what to monitor the size of the plastic particles?

rather not relevant - however, new technologies are constantly emerging: in order to meet the requirements of plastic sorters, the operators of the systems should invest in pretreatment

not relevant at all - there are pressing problems that prevent the sustainability of plastics

Miscellaneous:

--pg.6

Standard PAS 1049 "The recycling pass"

This standard, introduced in 2004, allows manufacturers, pre-treatment companies and recyclers to exchange device-related material information: Which plastics and metals does a medical device contain? These passports could contain the composition of the materials, color information and other information on pretreatment. The figures below give some examples.

picture

Q8: In many cases, small / medium-sized medical products are shredded and not first dismantled. In these cases, recycling passes are rarely used in shredders, mostly only for new product groups.

Outside of Europe, however, there are countries where labor costs for manual cutting are cheaper than shredding. A recycling pass is useful here.

Please let us know what you think.

very relevant - recycling passports should be issued more often than before for more complex devices and instruments

rather relevant - the cost of maintaining such information is quite high

Undecided - it is only feasible if automatic test methods for plastics or the transfer of information are introduced

rather not relevant - there are already more frequently used methods to exchange the quality of the plastic granulates

not relevant at all - there are pressing problems that prevent the sustainability of plastics

Miscellaneous:

--pg.7

REACH regulation 1907/2006 Article 33, Chemicals Act § 16f new

On January 5, 2021, the legal obligation to enter notifiable substances of very high concern (SVHC) in medical and other products into an EU database called SCiP begins.

picture

Q9 - final question: will you enter your medical devices in the SCiP database if they contain notifiable substances?

The database enables you to upload your own repair, dismantling and recycling data.

Please select one option or enter something under "Other".

Yes

No

Maybe

miscellaneous

--pg.8

To the end

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for your assessments. If you are interested in the results, you can write to me by clicking on my name:

--pg.9

Thank you for your participation!

My main interest is: What economic framework is necessary in times of COVID-19 for the more frequent processing and better recycling of medical devices?

Thank you very much for your collaboration on this study. I would be happy to send BVMed a copy of the completed study with anonymized results. BVMed will forward this to the participating or interested member companies from around May 2021 as a thank you.

If you are interested in the evaluations, please contact me directly:

[email protected]

Your answers have been saved, you can now close the browser window.

Copyright © 2021 Carsten Dietsche, environmental auditor, Egelsbach. All rights reserved. FernUniversität in Hagen - INFERNUM - Interdisciplinary Environmental Sciences