When Hospital Waste Becomes Money: The Medical Waste Business in the 1990s

When Hospital Waste Becomes Money: The Medical Waste Business in the 1990s

In the early 1990s, Japanese society was reeling in the aftermath of the collapse of the bubble economy. As the recession worsened and corporate bankruptcies and job insecurity spread, many industries sought new markets. One area that attracted attention was what is collectively referred to as the "environmental business. In particular, a new category of medical waste emerged against the backdrop of legal developments and heightened social awareness of safety.

In 1989, the Ministry of Health and Welfare (now the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare) published "Guidelines for the Disposal of Medical Waste," which established a policy of treating injection needles and bloodstained gauze as infectious waste. In 1992, the Waste Disposal and Public Cleansing Law was revised, and infectious waste was classified as specially controlled industrial waste. This meant that medical waste, which had previously been treated as general waste, suddenly became high-risk, high-cost "special treatment," requiring dedicated storage, transportation, and treatment.

New entrants from a wide variety of industries saw this change as a business opportunity. Noboru Watanabe, chairman of the Medical Waste Subcommittee of the National Federation of Industrial Waste Management Associations, said, "This is a new market. It's a new market, after all. We have had entrants from various industries, such as real estate, cab companies, and civil engineering companies. Until now, waste disposal has been done at a low price or for free, but when it comes to infectious waste disposal, the price is more than 10 times higher. This statement suggests that the industry has witnessed the moment when waste treatment is transformed from a "cost" to a "profit.

However, this rapid market expansion has also created many distortions. The unit price for medical waste disposal varied widely from 50 yen to 1,000 yen per kilogram depending on the vendor, resulting in dumping competition. Contractors selling inexpensive treatment used the same sloppy methods as before the law was revised, reigniting the risk of infection and the problem of illegal dumping. The ironic result was that the system became a skeleton, and the "safety" that had been so carefully established was once again set back by cost pressures.

This market, created by the cooling of the economy after the bursting of the bubble economy and the establishment of laws, attracted attention as a kind of "gold mine. However, as long as the means for digging the vein were imperfect, what ensued was double damage to the environment and health. Mr. Watanabe's comment was not just a pleasant one for the operators, but also contained the dangers that lie in the shadow of a rapidly growing new market. The question of who and how to dispose of the "life-threatening waste" generated in the medical field remains a question that confronts Japanese society to this day.