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Historically, environmental performance has rarely been a core business value for hospitals.  Hospital waste disposal practices are usually guided by regulatory requirements with limited economic considerations and without a clear understanding on the effects of incineration, people’s health and the environment. 

Intact ecosystems provide services essential for human and wildlife, including clean air, water, food, and waste recycling. Resource consumption, contamination of air, water, and soil with chemical and biological agents and others degrade those ecosystems.  The medical industrial directly contributes to each of these. Unfortunately, until recently, with their focus on therapeutic medicine, health care providers and institutions were largely unaware of the public health and environmental impacts of their practices. Now, that is beginning to change with increasing demand and awareness that health care institutions take responsibility for practices that degrade ecosystems and damage the health of people and other species. 

Hospitals are known to generate tonnes and tonnes of waste each year. In the past, some hospitals simply dumped all waste streams together, from reception-area trash to operating room waste, and burned them in incinerators. Incinerators were seen as the most cost effective way to manage waste. Recently, incinerators have been declared as unsustainable waste management options because they are a leading source of highly toxic dioxin, mercury, lead and other dangerous air pollutants.

The problem of medical waste will not disappear in one day, or even one year, if all stakeholders, medical practitioners, health care administrators, municipalities, regulatory bodies, industry, government, and civil society at large do not take ownership of their responsibility in it. Read on for more!!

Swaziland like other developing countries has liberalised her economy as a way of creating jobs, fighting escalating poverty and competing on the global market. Swaziland's incorporation into the countries eligible for preferential access to US markets through the African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA) is believed to be bolstering trade through export oriented garment production.  AGOA, set up in 2001, gives Swaziland duty free and quota free apparel access to US markets (Clean Clothes Campaign, 15 June 2002). 

About 20 000 jobs are said to have been created by the textile industries (Budget Speech 2003). Unfortunately, some of these developments occur at the expense of people and the environment. Workers, particularly in the garment and textile industries, are known to experience poor working conditions. It has been argued that while companies play an important role in investment and long-term development, technology and skills transfer and job creation, a company's prime motivation is to make a profit, not to educate a nation or provide clean water for every village.

Certain big businesses have long been afraid of making costly commitments to reduce environmental burdens especially in Africa and indeed Swaziland. Some of the free market "fundamentalist" think tanks believe that any form of regulation on them would have a negative impact on the economy, while others fear that "green washing" has made certain corporates appear to care for people and the environment, while at the same time they plunder our natural resources. 

From a business interest perspective, many NGOs are indeed critical of transnational corporate interests. In that context then, they see NGOs as "undemocratic," when they are just as legitimate a part of civil society as businesses are. Yonge Nawe is advocating for sustainable development within the context of environmental stewardship. We hope you are enjoying our articles. Please send us your comments.