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Test tubes are widely used in medical facilities, for example, for collecting blood specimens of patients undergoing health checkups. Plastic-made and disposable tubes are increasingly replacing glass-made tubes, owing to the fact that they are convenient and hygienic. Because of the increase in the population of senior citizens in Japan and the increase in people’s interest in their health, the amount of used test tubes will be much higher in the future. In Japan, recycling of medical waste is not a common practice, but there has been some research on medical waste management (Kagawa et al., 2006; Tamiya, 2004, Yamaguchi et al., 2002). Recycling of medical waste is gaining increasing popularity abroad, and it continues to attract the attention of researchers (Kushida, 2000; Bohlmann et al., 2005; Lee et al., 2002; Bartholomew et al., 2002). Test tubes used for blood tests are mostly made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET). In 2005, the total domestic demand for PET resin was 544,500 tons (Editorial Office of Monthly the Waste, 2006). Materials made of PET can be sold at a high price in the market; consequently, recycling industries in Japan are finding it increasingly difficult to source used PET materials. China in particular has a high demand and pays a good price for PET materials: Japan exported 338,000 tons of PET to China in 2009 (The Council for PET Bottle Recycling, 2010). Incineration has been the main treatment method for PET tubes; however, social consensus against dioxins discourages incineration. Heating treatment followed by direct disposal is another option for treating the tubes, but this option is not reliable since complete inactivation of pathogens in the tubes by heating treatment is not guaranteed. Besides, the heating treatment has another problem. Unlike the incineration treatment, heating leaves blood in the tubes after the treatment. The blood that remains in the tubes drips from the tubes during direct disposal process, which has ethical non-acceptance and implications even though pathogens in the blood would be completely killed.

Preliminary Study of Treatment of Spent Test Tubes Used for Blood Tests by Acidic Electrolyzed Water