Plasma donation and testing company BioLife Plasma Services LP in has invested $4 million to expand its testing laboratory in Hoover, Ala., and buy equipment to recycle biohazardous plastics waste more efficiently.
The facility tests about 30,000 plasma donation samples daily. The 1,750 square feet of new processing space is expected to divert about 200 metric tons of biohazardous waste from landfills annually.
Biolife collects plasma samples from its 270 donation centers across the U.S. and Europe, and ships them to testing centers in Covington, Ga., and Hoover Ala., and on to Takeda Pharmaceutical manufacturing plants to be turned into therapies, Laura Cappellucci, services sustainability lead at BioLife, told Plastics News in an interview.
"Plastic waste [is] generated at the plasma donation sites from collecting the samples of plasma from the donors, as well as in the testing labs," Cappellucci said.
At the testing site in Hoover, Biolife can shred and decontaminate its waste before sending it to recyclers for further processing, she said.
"We sterilize the test tubes from the testing lab and shred these into flakes that are not contaminated. That material can then be recycled by a specific recycling partner that [can] separate out the different plastic types into a more uniform substance that can be sold and then turned into new plastic goods.
"The shredding helps the sterilization process become more effective, to make sure that the steam sterilization is reaching every piece of the waste," Cappellucci said. "Another benefit of the shredding process is that [it] consolidates the volume and reduces some of the weight of our waste. When we send the output to our recyclers, it's a much lighter weight substance that we're shipping. There is a benefit from the associated transportation emissions."
The device has been operational and processing waste from the Hoover site since January. BioLife is partnering with a plastics recycler to turn the processed materials into items like fencing, shelving units, septic tanks, flowerpots and other items.
"We have already processed over 24,000 pounds of material," she added.
Biolife plasma services is a subsidiary of Tokyo-based Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., which has an objective to send zero waste to landfills by 2030.
"That is certainly a significant challenge that we have needed to navigate how we find the most optimal solutions to reach that goal without impacting our core business," Cappellucci said.
The recent investment adds to a $10 million investment to build a biomedical plastic waste processing facility at Takeda's Covington, Ga., plasma manufacturing site, which manufactures immunoglobulin and albumin therapies.
The 8,000-square-foot biomedical plastic waste processing facility sterilizes and shreds millions of plastic bottles and test tubes that pass through the Covington site annually.