Iron Mountain® sterilization wrap recycling service

Solution Guides

Helping you do good while doing business. With Iron Mountain Sterilization Wrap Recycling service, you can now recycle surgical wrap in a safe, cost-effective manner to help eliminate unnecessary landfill and incineration waste and elevate your sustainability initiatives.

January 16, 20246 mins
Recycleable blocks being stacked
It’s time to unwrap your medical facility recycling program.

Business challenge

Doctors and nurses are laser focused on saving lives every day. While they know that the sterilization wrap, also known as blue wrap or surgery wrap, is used to safeguard surgical equipment is typically single-use only, they don’t have time to worry about what ends up in the landfill after an operation or medical procedure. Yet rising operating expenses are pushing medical facilities to find new ways to reduce costs, including how they handle waste management.

What if you could...

  • Standardize how sterilization recycling occurs throughout your facility?
  • Make sterilization wrap recycling part of the operating room or medical procedure process?
  • Reduce your facility’s carbon footprint and help your organization achieve ESG targets?

Iron Mountain sterilization wrap recycling service

With Iron Mountain Sterilization Wrap Recycling service, you can now recycle surgical wrap in a safe, cost-effective manner to help eliminate unnecessary landfill and incineration waste and elevate your sustainability initiatives. As part of your overall shredding program, our service helps you collect and manage used blue wrap onsite so it can be transported to Iron Mountain for handling and recycling. With our service, the collection of sterilization wrap is routine, so recycling becomes a part of the checklist of any operation or medical procedure.

Our commitment

By 2040, we will drive circular economy innovation by working toward zero waste in our operations and collaborating with others to create closedloop products and services.

How it works

  1. Iron Mountain helps you place sterilization wrap collection containers in the proper areas outside your operating rooms or medical treatment areas.

  2. Medical staff collect any uncontaminated sterilization wrap used in operating rooms or medical treatment areas into the collection containers. (Contaminated materials should be disposed/ incinerated per normal disposal procedures at the facility). 

  3. Waste/Facilities Management personnel (or medical staff) move the collection containers to areas accessible by Iron Mountain. 

  4. Iron Mountain collects the containers during normal shred pickup operations and transports the sterilization wrap to the recycler. 

  5. The material is recycled via molecular or mechanical recycling and the resulting output can be then used to make new plastic products.
Sterilization recycling service infographic

What you gain

  • Ease of recycling sterilization wrap that implements seamlessly into your existing facility processes
  • Reduction of waste management costs with an efficient, standardized service
  • Achieve ESG targets with an impactful recycling program

With Iron Mountain Sterilization Wrap Recycling service, you also receive training to adopt the program and ensure there are no program gaps, and our dedicated team will answer any questions and support your plans as you need.

To learn more about Iron Mountain’s portfolio, download our solution guide below.