Request for Information: Hazardous and Biohazardous Waste Management and Processing Environmental Comparative Assessment

Description

The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) mission is to lead, enable and regulate the sector in a way that optimises its contribution to social, economic and environmental sustainability. DAFM currently employs approximately 4,000 staff across a range of disciplines including veterinarians, engineers, scientists, inspectors, and administrators. The Laboratory Service is an integral part of DAFM, providing scientific support and expertise in the areas of animal health, food and feed safety and plant health. The Departments Laboratory Service provides the scientific data and evidence for the monitoring, surveillance and research work which supports food safety, animal health and welfare and plant health programmes throughout the State. The central Laboratory Service building comprises six divisions; Virology, Pathology, Bacteriology and Parasitology, Plant Science, Food Chemistry and Food Microbiology. The required scientific testing processes produce a wide range of hazardous and biohazardous waste, including waste from Category 3 Containment Laboratories. This request for information seeks to gain an understanding of service providers who can produce a study of the waste currently generated from some and up to all of the divisions mentioned above and to produce a comparative assessment between the existing waste processing cycle and the potential benefit in the introduction of a new novel waste processing and recycling technology. This study will ideally provide information on the environmental impact of the current technologies in use and provide quantitative data as to how great an effect a new technology could have in reducing water use, waste-water generation, energy usage, greenhouse gas emissions and provide information of the amount of waste which could potentially be recycled rather than disposed of.