Nebraska Medical Waste Disposal

Nebraska, home of Kool-Aid, Warren Buffet and beef! With a human population of 1.8 million and a cattle population of 6.3 million, humans are outnumbered nearly 4 to 1 by cows. Needless to say, Nebraska’s biggest industry is agriculture. Other than cattle, corn and soybeans are the next largest exports.

Amazingly, 93% of Nebraska’s land (45.5 million acres) is used for agricultural purposes according to a 2013 National Agriculture Statistics Service report. There are a staggering forty-six thousand farms in NE with an average of 974 acres per farm.

The Nebraska Department of Agriculture states that 1 in 4 jobs in Nebraska are in the agriculture field. These jobs allowed the state’s farmers to export 7.2 billion dollars in 2014, most of the money coming from soybeans, corn, cattle, and animal hides.

While ag is booming in Nebraska, and has been for the past 100 or so years, the healthcare industry is slowly making its way up there.

Healthcare in Nebraska

By 2020, the number of Registered Nurses jobs are expected to increase by 12%, Audiology jobs are expected to increase by 33% and all healthcare practitioner jobs are expected to grow by 14%.

All in, the healthcare tech and practitioner market is expected to bring in 8,516 jobs. Along with the tremendous job growth jobs in the industry make far above the average national and state level wages. The average yearly household income in the United States is $43,000, and the average hourly wage is $25.12/hour according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

While the median hourly wage for those in healthcare is $25.66, or only 54 cents more an hour when compared to the US average, the yearly income is over $11,000 more at $53,386.

This means that if we assume all 8,000 of these new jobs pay $53k a year, by 2020 the healthcare industry alone will be responsible for 450 MILLION dollars in salaries.

Growth and Responsibility

As the healthcare industry grows, so does the amount of waste that Nebraska hospitals and practices produce.

Reducing state wide pollution of NE’s waterways and prairies is everybody’s job, from your family doctor to the state legislators. Medical waste pollution in particular is quite dangerous for a few reasons. First, the waste is potentially infectious. If wildlife gets ahold of the waste, they can actually get sick and pass on the sickness to other animals.

Second, expired or unneeded medications, if improperly disposed of, can be introduced to the local water supply.

The University of Nebraska Medical Center reports that in 2012 industrial facilities dumped 10 million pounds of chemicals into rivers and lakes around the state.

While most of Nebraska’s pollution comes from the agricultural and industrial industries, medical waste pollution is still something we have to be mindful of.

If you are interested in a more in depth article about what happens to medical waste after it’s picked up, click here.

The short version is the waste is picked up, sanitized (preferably using an autoclave), and then put into a sanitary landfill built specifically to reduce the amount of water pollution that comes from the landfill.

MedPro offers medical, biohazardous, sharps and pharmaceutical disposal services at a low cost. We actually save our customers an average of 30% off when compared to their current medical waste disposal vendor.

If your facility produces medical waste and you want to do your part in ensuring your state is pollution free, give us a call or fill out our form today.