DOT Awareness- the Department of Transportation (DOT) requires this certification to provide general awareness training for transportation of hazardous materials,  topics required by 49 CFR 172.704.

Hazwoper – Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response- required by OSHA to meet requirements that responders must meet in order to attend to emergency response needs. Waste Stream Solutions Employees are trained in a 40hr course and must complete an 8hr refresher course annually.

HIPAA – Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act- As of 1996, was inacted in short to help protect the privacy and security of patients information. Waste Stream Solutions provides value added services to our clients by offering Secure Document Destruction. Our staff has met the training requirements as required by the HIPAA Privacy Laws

Hipaa standards are a set of guidelines that were drawn up to provide a set of standards for how medical records are destroyed after they leave an office. Not adhering to these standards for medical record and document destruction can result in civil, as well as criminal penalties for any medical professional who is found to be in violation.

When a medical office selects a hippa certified document destruction service, they will receive a written document stating that they have done so from the shredding service. Also, each time that their documents are picked up and shredded they will receive a dated receipt for the pick up.

A hipaa certified document destruction service will always provide a secure locked storage bin for the office to keep their discarded documents in while they are waiting to be picked up.  One other aspect of hipaa certified shredding is that it is done in a cross cut fashion which makes the shredded documents impossible to put back together.

OSHA - The Occupation Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), an agency of  the US Dept of Labor was established with purpose of assuring that every employer had the responsibility of providing to its’ employees, a safe and healthy working environment. OSHA’s mission statement is, “to save lives, prevent injuries and protect the health of America’s workers. Waste Stream Solutions employees are all trained on these principles to ensure their own safety and health in their own work environment while always being aware of the environments of our clients. WSS employees will report to the WSS compliance officer if they notice any potential violations, in turn, the compliance officer will notify our clients. All in an effort to keep our customers safe, health and happy…and in compliance.

The typical recycle span of Reusable containers will have a three year life of re-usability. This is because reusable containers are generally four times thicker than regular containers. This enables our reusable containers to be more puncture-resistant and reduces the risk of injury to your staff. The durability of these containers allows the cost savings of purchasing fewer sharps containers which combines convenience and environmental responsibility. It not only reduces the risk of your staff’s safety, but also prevents thousands of tons of plastic and corrugated material from accumulating in landfills.
The management of sharps, pharmaceutical and medical waste is highly regulated due to the potentially hazardous nature of the materials involved. Waste Stream Solutions takes pride in following and maintaining compliance in all relevant laws and regulations to assure our clients a safe and compliant re-usable program that is extremely cost effective and environmentally friendly.

Allow us to give your facility a peace of mind by developing a price plan that ensures a cost effective savings and a release of stress from dealing with high volumes of medical waste disposal.

The Occupation Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), an agency of  the US Dept of Labor was established with purpose of assuring that every employer had the responsibility of providing to its’ employees, a safe and healthy working environment. OSHA’s mission statement is, “to save lives, prevent injuries and protect the health of America’s workers.

Waste Stream Solutions takes OSHA’s mission into every workplace, by providing to our customers training on workplace hazards and employee’s rights. We also provide a customized manual to each client, providing them with written plans for Injury Illness and Prevention (IIPP), Hazardous Communication,  Emergency Action and Bloodbourne Pathogens to name a few. We also provide the yearly in-service required in the medical field for Bloodbourne Pathogen Training/Review. At this time we provide a mock inspection of your facility, pointing out possible violations to help you keep your facility in compliance.

Your customized manual is complete with the following sections:

• IIPP
• Fire Prevention
• Emergency Action Plan
• Bloodbourne Pathogen
• Hazard Communication
• Ergonomic Awareness
• Sexual Harassment
• Radiation
• Medical Waste
• We also provide a reproducible handbook for distribution to your employees, Written Test and Answer Keys and the OSHA Standards at your fingertips

America alone generates nearly 208 million tons of solid waste per year and it is only expected to increase. Each person actually generates about 4.3 pounds of waste per day. Even though we have developed many different ways to dispose of refuse, there is still no absolutely safe way to remove and store trash.

History of Waste Disposal

The disposal of waste wasn’t always so carefully monitored. In the 18th century in England and France, people with carts were paid to carry trash out of town and dispose of it. Benjamin Franklin spurred the first municipal cleaning system in Philadelphia in 1757, making the dumping of trash in open pits a routine action. However, since then our trash has become more complicated and can’t simply be placed in a hole in the ground. We have many different types of trash and they must be disposed of properly to prevent contaminating the environment.

Types of Waste

There are many different types of waste and it is classified according to its physical, chemical, and biological characteristics. One of the major ways it is classified is by consistency; whether it is solid or liquid waste. To classify as a solid waste the material must contain less than 70% water. This classification often encompasses materials such as; household garbage, industrial wastes, mining waste, and some oilfield wastes. Liquid wastes must be less than 1% solid and is often from wastewater. Wastewater often contains high levels of dissolved salts and metals. Sludge is the final consistency classification; being somewhere between a liquid and a solid. Sludge often contains between 3 and 25% solids and the rest of it is made up of water dissolved materials.

The Federal government classifies waste into 3 categories; non-hazardous, hazardous, and Special wastes. Non-hazardous waste does not pose any immediate threat to health or the environment. This category includes household refuse. Hazardous wastes can either be ignitable/reactive or leachable. This means that hazardous waste is either flammable or has the potential to leach toxic chemicals. Special wastes have very specific guidelines to regulate it. Examples of Special Waste would be radioactive waste and medical waste.

How do we dispose of it?

There are a variety of ways that we dispose of trash and waste. Landfill use is the most common and can account for more than 90% of the countries municipal waste. However, landfills have been proven to contaminate drinking water in some regions. Landfills are the most cost-effective way of disposing; collection and transport represents 75% of the total cost involved. In modern landfills, the garbage is spread thin in compacted layers and then is covered by fresh earth. Landfills minimize pollution by lining the hole, contouring the fill, compacting and planting the top cover layer, diverting drainage, and by choosing sites that are not often affected by flooding or high groundwater levels. Clay is the best type of soil for a landfill because it is less permeable than other types of soil. Some materials that are disposed of in landfills can be solidified into solid materials like cement, fly ash, asphalt, or organic polymers.

Garbage is also disposed of using incinerators. This method is more costly but safer than a landfill. Modern incinerators can destroy nearly 99.9% of organic waste material. Many thermal processes recover energy from the solid waste that is incinerated. Pyrolysis, the process of chemical breakdown can produce a plethora of gasses and inert ash. Incinerators that burn garbage have been known to contaminate the air, soil, and water. Many communities near incinerators object to them for fear of possible harmful emissions.

Hazardous waste is also pumped into deep wells inside the earth. This is called waste injection. Many people are strongly opposed to this because it has caused explosions and even earthquakes in the past.

Organic materials that contain little or no heavy metals can be detoxified biologically. This is often done by composting and land farming; where waste materials are spread over a large area of land so that microbes can easily work to decompose them. However, hazardous wastes must be detoxified before they leach into the groundwater causing water contamination.

Recycling solid waste is not a new idea. In prehistoric times, metal tools were often melted down and recast. These days, recyclable materials are removed from municipal waste by shredding, magnetic separation of metals, screening, and washing. Composting involves the preparing of waste and breaking down the organic matter using aerobic microorganisms. This has lead to many municipalities and garbage collection agencies to require their customers to separate recyclable items from other types of household waste.

Another type of waste is livestock waste. It is created by large livestock companies. These generate more than 30 times the waste that humans do. Yearly, livestock waste accounts for 1.375 billion tons of refuse. The Environmental Products and Technologies Corporation has developed a system to reduce the amount of livestock waste. With their Closed Loop Waste Management System they can turn animal waste into commercial quantities of pathogen free, nutrient dense, soil building materials.

The Future of Waste

Currently, the best way to reduce the amount of waste that must be disposed of is to prevent its creation. Consumers must protest against the production of needless waste and push the movement for using and producing recycled products. These strategies to reduce waste may cost us more upfront but we will pay a lesser price in the end. Reducing waste can add extra years in which we can live on this planet healthfully.