Medical Waste Disposal

In early 1991 Star Industries was founded to pick up and dispose of infectious medical waste, as it was then called, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.. That wasn't too long after the " needles on the beaches" incidents on the eastern seacoast of the US. Back then the state was just getting into gear to implement its newly-written and enacted "Medical Waste Regulatory Act", and less than a dozen generators of medwaste in the UP used a medwaste disposal service. A surprisingly large amount of medwaste was sent an area crematorium, perhaps, or simply to a garbage dump riding in the back of the pickup truck, or incinerated in the device built for that task right at the hospital or clinic, perhaps.

Star now serves the UP (and adjoining areas of Wisconsin) with regular pickup of medwaste from more than 200 generators of the waste. Not only hospitals use Star’s services, but also clinics, schools, small medical or dental practices, veterinarians, tattoo shops, prisons, and so on.

Many tons of medwaste are collected each week by Star employees. The waste is returned to our facility in Marquette in our trucks driven by our employees. We process it in our steam autoclave before transporting it for permanent disposal at the Marquette County Landfill, a municipal landfill, for perpetual internment. A very small portion of the waste (chemo and pathological material) is shipped to an medwaste incineration device elsewhere.

We visit each generator on a timely basis, keeping in mind that Michigan law requires that the waste be kept on-site at the generator's facility no more than 90 days after generation. So we visit small practices about four or five times a year. We visit the biggest hospitals at least once a week, and everyone else falls somewhere in between. We notify the smaller generators before our regularly-scheduled visits, so they can avoid a service charge for having no waste when we arrive - and that happens pretty often, for any number of reasons including vacations or no sports events!

By the way, for your protection we're bonded and insured. For our protection we've all had our hepatitis B shots, and wear appropriate protective clothing when making our pickups. We offer training to our customers on proper handling and packaging of medical waste, of course, and have been know to send "nasty-grams" to waste generators that aren't following safe and proper guidelines. Yes, and we thank those folks that do a good job, too.

Medical waste disposal in the U.P. is pretty easy for a generator of the stuff, thanks to Star Industries. If you would like more information than you've found here, either send an e-mail to Star or get in touch with us by mail or telephone.

Star Industries
P. O. Box 1054
Marquette, Michigan 49855
We look forward to hearing from you.
And - Thanks for doing business with Star Industries