Solid Waste Report

5/17/02

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Medwaste Incineration Foes Protest At Steriycle Shareholder Meeting

By Susan Hsu

Health and environmental groups continued holding Stericycle's medical waste incineration methods to the fire May 15, as they protested and held a press conference outside of the company’s annual shareholder meeting in Rosemont, Illinois.

Members of Health Care Without Harm (HCWH) passed out fliers to shareholders as they entered the meeting, urging them to put pressure on the company to end its incineration methods. Protesters wore papier-mâché pregnant bellies to visually associate waste incineration with the health of future generations.

Living with Incinerators

Meanwhile, community representatives discussed their experiences living in an area where Stericycle operates its incinerators.

"They are not leaders in St. Louis, they are a neighborhood bully," Darryl Piggee, attorney for the Medical Waste Incinerator Group (MWIG) in St. Louis said of Stericycle. "The profits from the St. Louis incinerator are made at the expense of the health of children, the frail and the elderly."

Currently Stericycle faces $250,000 in fines, one of the highest fines to be proposed in Missouri's history, for alleged violations in 2000, including accepting more waste than its permit allowed and excessive emissions. The site is in an area that is 90 percent African-American, and where more than 30 percent of the population lives below the poverty level, Piggee said.

Though Stericycle owns an autoclave at the St. Louis site, it continues to burn waste, stating that some types of waste are required by law to be incinerated and that the company is under contract to incinerate some of its customers' medical waste. However, Piggee said that increasingly, generators of medical waste are joining citizens in demanding that medical waste management follow a "first, do no harm" pledge.

Washington University Medical School, for example, has insisted that its waste be treated by autoclave. Last year, the school paid more to send its waste out of state because Stericycle did not offer the technology in St. Louis, Piggee said.

"It is time to shut the incinerator down and move into the 21st century with non-incinerator technologies. We refuse to accept that we must poison our children in order to treat our sick.

Native American Culture Jeopardized

In the Gila River Indian Community of Arizona, Stericycle’s incinerator is interfering not only with people's health, but also with the reservation's agricultural economy and cultural beliefs, said community member Brenda Robertson.

Economic development at the reservation is such that the community will need to begin farming more lands for grains. The incinerators could pose a threat to the agriculture, to healing herbs used by the tribe, and to animals, for which the tribe has maintained its tradition of respect, Robertson said.

Stericycle could not be reached for comment.