Waste Management in Hospitals, Case Project with Ecosir Oy and Eksote

Abstract

This thesis was created to evaluate the current situation in hospital and health-care waste management, and to give solutions and improvement ideas, with the help of a case project. The case companies in this thesis are Ecosir Group Ltd and Eksote, which was involved in the project to evaluate South Karelian central hospital’s current waste and laundry management. The research problem was defined in the following way: How is waste management in hospitals handled in the current time, and how can we improve in these aspects from the hospital’s point of view, as well as patients. Also, what are the future plans for waste managing in hospitals? The study includes information collected both from literature and from the results found in the case project. The theoretical part was mainly based on existing information found on books online, and it was written alongside the empirical parts, to compare and combine theory and practice together. The thesis will present current working methods on waste management in hospitals and will evaluate them from different aspects. The theoretical part focuses on answering why waste management in hospitals is wise to keep in good control. Empirical part will focus on giving ideas how to improve from this and give a case example.