HATTIESBURG — Prior to 2000, most hospitals in the U.S. had medical waste incinerators, often on site. That included Forrest General Hospital. Then the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ruled that all hospital incinerators in the U.S. had to either be shut down or be upgraded — something that could cost millions of dollars — by September 2000, Forrest General started looking at alternatives to solve their medical waste disposal needs.
In September 2000, Forrest Health, the operating company for Forrest General Hospital and its other related entities, launched CleanEarth, a subsidiary which established a Rotoclave® facility in north Hattiesburg to use steam to sterilize medical waste. Douglas A. Jones, chief operating officer, Forrest Health, said heat is used to sterilize the waste, which is then ground up into small pellets for disposal in a landfill.
“The original idea was to use it for our facilities,” Jones said. “But a single Rotoclave® can service a lot of different facilities. So we applied to the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) for a solid waste disposal permit that allowed us to accept waste from other facilities. We received that permit in July 2002.”
CleanEarth added a second Rotoclave® in 2002 that expanded capacity and allowed it to become a regional provider for medical waste disposal.
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