By ANISAH ARIF
Householders in Bradford have been issued a warning not to put hazardous waste such as used hypodermic needles in their general or recycling waste bin.
Recycling employees are worried that staff whose job is to sort through the recycled waste are being put at a major risk of hard by the needles.
Boxes of needles or even plastic bottled overfed with needles have been retrieved from the recycling collection. A few of these have burst leaving potentially harmful needles or other contaminated products loose in the recycling stream.
Clinical waste such as needles are hazardous and are requested to returned to the chemist or other health facilities from where they came from.
Staff will be able to point out hazardous waste bins where they can be deposited.
Bradford Council’s Household Waste Recycling Centre’s are providing patients to return their needles there, if for any reason cannot be returned to a health facility.
Councillor Sarah Ferriby, Bradford Council’s Executive Member for Healthy People and Place said: “We don’t want needles in our recycling bins. They should be disposed of in the proper containers and returned to where they come from so they can be destroyed without causing risk to anyone.
“Recycling collection and sorting staff have a very challenging job to do without having to put up with serious risks to their health from items which should not be in the recycling stream.”
This comes after a man was fined for burning a rubbish fire that was left near a residents home in Hollins Bank Lane Steeton, a court was told.
