Sterilizers & Autoclaves News

World Waste Technologies, Inc., based in San Diego, California, is in its early stage, a company engaged in the waste recycling and pulp manufacturing industry.

In experimental conditions, it has processed small amounts of municipal solid waste to successfully reduce the waste’s quantity and yield a grade of cellulose fiber suitable as a partial furnish replacement in unbleached packaging products. More information on World Waste is available at www.worldwastetech.com.

On Feb 24, 2005, World Waste Technologies, Inc. announced that it has received $2 million in additional funding from an institutional investor. The world Waste Technologies Inc. has come to an agreement with the investor, to outsource the fund to the public in terms of shares, so as to acquire and additional income for its plant under construction.

On confirming about the financing, World Waste issued 800,000 Units, each Unit comprised of one share of common stock and warrants to acquire up to an additional 0.25 shares of common stock at an exercise price of $0.01, at a purchase price of $2.50 a Unit. The company has agreed with the investor to register the resale of these shares in accordance with the Securities Act of 1933.

Thomas L. Collins, World Waste’s, chief executive officer announced that, the has making significant progress in the construction of its first facility. Several pieces of equipment have arrived, including the three largest and most expensive pieces; the two autoclaves and the twin wire press are on site for which they are fully paid.

But the company still needs to raise a significant amount of additional capital. This new funding would certainly help in our ongoing efforts to raise the funds to complete this facility.

World Waste is in the process of installing Pressurized Steam Classification Vessels, and pulp cleaning and screening equipment as part of its planned 500-ton per day municipal solid waste processing plant in Anaheim, CA. The Pressurized Steam Classification Vessels will enable World Waste to efficiently extract cellulose fiber from municipal solid waste that can be resold to paper and cardboard manufacturers in the form of a wetlap product.

Safe Harbor Statement

World Waste Technologies Inc in a press release includes certain “Forward-Looking Statements” within the meaning of section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All statements regarding potential results and future plans and objectives of World Waste, are forward-looking statements that involve various risks and uncertainties.

There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate. Actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations include, but are not limited to, those factors that are disclosed under the heading “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in our documents filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Other risk factors may include, our ability to obtain financing on acceptable terms, or at all, cost overruns in connection with the construction of our plant, working capital constraints, fluctuation in quarterly results, and increased competition for the fields targeted by the company, our ability to commence operations as scheduled, the economical operation of the process we intend to operate and our ability to protect the proprietary technology we use.

Further, the company operates in an industry sector where securities values are highly volatile and may be influenced by economic and other factors beyond the company’s control, such as announcements by competitors and service providers.

Delegates at a workshop on solid waste management organized by the Bengal Chamber of Commerce & Industry (BCCI), the Indo-British Scholars Association and Concern for Calcutta, were told the state government would install the autoclave and related equipment in smaller towns and semi-rural areas for disposal of bio-wastes, but NGOs and other social welfare associations would have to run them as partners of the government.

The Principal Secretary of the Health and Family Welfare Department of the state, Asim Barman said that the West Bengal state government would like non-government organizations and welfare societies to operate autoclaves set up by the government for disposing off bio-wastes in smaller town and semi-urban areas in the state.

It is not only about creating a new market for autoclaves and other connected equipment and waste-related services, but it is also a proposal that would lead to safe disposal of hazardous solid waste. This bio-hazardous waste is currently being dumped in open spaces and into water bodies throughout he state and the country.

Barman said from April 1, all state hospitals would mandatorily segregate bio-medical wastes into three categories — infectious, anatomical wastes and other wastes.

A bio-waste processing and recycling unit set up by a private investor would be collecting materials from hospitals. The state government owned hospitals were the largest polluters in terms of bio-medical waste generation

Khokan Mukherjee, speaking on behalf of Concern for Calcutta, said the country had witnessed a significant increase in municipal solid waste (MSW) in the last few years. The per capita MSW per day ranged from 100 grams in small towns to 500g in large urban concentrations.

The average volume of per capita waste generation per day was 468 grams. The amount of waste generated per capita was estimated to increase rapidly.

The partners such as NGO’s, social welfare organizations etc. would also have to collect wastes from government and private hospitals. The quantum of waste generated from state hospitals in smaller towns and semi-urban areas would be limited.

To justify the investment in autoclaves, the partner organizations would be encouraged to collect bio-medical wastes from private clinics and nursing homes at a charge.

Health Care Without Harm and the Philippine Department of Health cooperated on a vaccination program. In this combined venture millions of children were protected from measles. Throughout the program not even a single syringes was incinerated.

Health care professionals vaccinated 18 million children in February. This vaccination program generated an estimated 19.5-million auto-disable syringes. This vast medical-waste was treated in autoclaves or microwave facilities and then buried in waste pits or encased in concrete vaults. Needle destruction technologies also were used in some areas.

The Philippine Health Secretary Manuel Dayrit said that The Philippine Measles Campaign experience is the largest mass immunization program that handled its medical waste without any incineration or open burning.

Philippines was the first country to ban the burning of all waste, including medical waste, for health and environmental reasons. The ban came into effect in 1999.

Health Care Without Harm represents medical professionals and institutions and advocates environmental sustainability. It released a report on the program on its Web site, www.noharm.org.

Maine’s hospitals dump more than 2 million pounds of medical waste such as used needles, blood-soaked surgical sponges, and intravenous tubes flows each year. Over the last several years, most of the waste has been routed to Rhode Island and Massachusetts to be incinerated and landfilled with household trash.

This issue has been given a serious thought by the hospital authorities and the environmentalists to seek a way out. The Maine Hospital Association is working with waste management companies to build a plant in central Maine that would process all of the state’s medical waste by the end of the year. So far, hospitals in Virginia are believed to be the only ones with stakes in a medical waste treatment facility.

Giant machines would sterilize the waste mostly linens and plastics with steam, then shred the residue into confetti-like bits for burial in specially licensed Maine landfills. Only 1 percent of the waste body parts and items used in chemotherapy, such as needles would still be shipped to out-of-state incinerators.

Environmentalists are delighted, since much of the waste, such as blood bags and patient identification bracelets, is made of polyvinyl chloride plastic, which when burned, can release harmful dioxins into the air that are blown back to Maine and wind up in the food chain.

Stericycle Inc., which monopolizes the medical waste disposal market in the state, and has raised rates without fear of competition. Jack May, the chief executive officer of Sebasticook Valley Hospital in Pittsfield, charged with overseeing the plant’s development for the hospital association, said that the management will be able to budget and know what our costs are going to be out into the future.

May projects his hospital will save over $5,000 a year, while larger hospitals could skim off about to $30,000, small drops in hospitals’ multi-million dollar operating budgets. May said that everything contributes in a climate of rising drug and other health-care costs.

Maine Medical Center in Portland said its relatively high volume of medical waste 430,000 pounds a year secures good disposal rates. Though it may not be economic but this helps all of the smaller hospitals get the critical mass of medical waste, makes the facility to be cost-effective adds Maine Med spokesman Wayne Clark.

The hospital association is considering sites in industrial parks in Newport and Pittsfield because of their central location and proximity to Interstate 95 and landfills in Norridgewock and Old Town. The association is hoped to pick a location by April 20. The new facility, projected to cost $500,000 to retrofit into an existing structure, provide up to 20 new middle-income jobs and produce little traffic, not more than two or three trucks a day.

The facility would be owned and operated by Syracuse, N.Y.-based SteriLogic Waste Systems Inc. Hydroclave Systems Corp. of Kingston, Ontario, would maintain the equipment, including two 6-foot-high autoclaves that will sterilize the medical waste with steam.

The hospital association would own the $1 million-plus equipment, and positions the group as majority owners of the facility. The association must seek a biomedical waste facility license and assurance must be provided meet safety regulations to the state Department of Environmental Protection. Environmentalist Mike Belliveau hopes sitting issues can be easily solved.

The idea to bring autoclaving to Maine emerged several years ago from a biomedical waste task force. Belliveau represented the Natural Resources Council of Maine in the group, which also included the hospital association and DEP.

In 2001, the groups reached a far-reaching pollution prevention agreement in which the hospitals assured to virtually eliminate the mercury found in their medical equipment and laboratories by 2005, steadily reduce the use of dioxin-producing plastics and reduce the volume of hospital waste by 50 percent by the year 2010. The association considered microwaving the waste before deciding on autoclaving as “the most economically feasible process, May said.

Hospitals in Virginia helped pave the way for this new technology. Since 1994, 60 members of the Virginia Hospital and Health Care Association have held stakes in a medical waste management company that uses autoclaving. The Richmond-based Virginia Health Care Waste Management Cooperative gives hospitals cost controls, returns any savings to shareholders and helped to decrease each member’s medical waste volume by 40 percent during their first year, said spokesman David Jenkins.

The project’s coordinator said that, the Maine initiative is to be a nonprofit venture but will also strive to reduce members’ waste streams, Instead of transporting waste in cardboard boxes, the facility would provide washable plastic tubs.

Chris Kerr, president of SteriLogic Waste Systems explained that, for the time being, the members have to buy the box, which is about 60 cents a box, and have to put a plastic liner in it. On top of that, you have to pay per pound to get rid of the box.

Charlotte Brody, executive director of Health Care Without Harm, an international organization, suggested that, given the state of the economy, hospitals need to be looking for opportunities where you can do well by doing good,” Brody said. “It just seems like (hospitals in Maine) are really trying to do it right.”

The project couldn’t be more straightforward to Joey Bard, the director of facilities at Northern Maine Medical Center in Fort Kent, which in 1992 became one of the last Maine hospitals to shut down an on-site incinerator due to stricter federal environmental regulations.