Healthcare waste in German hospitals: A nationwide benchmark study

There is currently no publicly available, scientifically sound data on solid waste generation in German hospitals, which is one reason why the implementation of circular economy initiatives on this subject has so far been largely unsuccessful. Therefore, this study aims to conduct a nationwide field study on waste generation in German hospitals. To this end, waste and structural data from 122 German hospital locations covering the 4 clusters of general hospitals, university hospitals, specialist hospitals and other hospitals in all 16 German states were collected in 2024 and statistically analysed. A total of 103,432 Mg of waste from these hospitals was documented, of which around 9% was hazardous and 1.4% infectious. The results show strong correlations between waste generation and staffing levels. Furthermore, differences between general and university hospitals were found for all eight key performance indicators examined. Based on the results, a differentiated extrapolation model for the mass of waste from German hospitals, which uses the number of beds as a reference value, is proposed.