miniwiz 小智研發

• There’s been no shortage of information about the impacts of the COVID 19 pandemic. Meanwhile, another set of numbers is also rising steadily, but with less public attention: medical waste.
• As the world struggles to find treatments and vaccines to fight coronavirus, the upcycling industry has been developing ideas for products that can help prevent infection and support care efforts in hospitals.
• MINIWIZ’s Modular Adaptable Convertible (MAC) hospital ward, in collaboration with Taiwan government and FJCU Hospital can be deployed and assembled quickly, transforming any space into a fully functional hospital ward in 24 hours or less.
• Scientists believe that the virus can live on plastic for up to three days and on glass for up to four, which means that your phone could easily become a dangerous transmission vector. To help people protect themselves, Miniwiz and the One Ocean Foundation have designed a universal antiviral phone pouch made from post-consumer plastic that eliminates 99.9% of germs
• Miniwiz is proud to take part in creating innovative, sustainable solutions during this difficult time. In addition to the launch of our MAC wards, we’re also planning on building a medical waste upcycling plant in Southeast Asia.

 

There’s been no shortage of information about the impacts of the COVID 19 pandemic — case numbers in the millions, death tolls in the hundreds of thousands, and record numbers of unemployment claims. Meanwhile, another set of numbers is also rising steadily, but with less public attention: medical waste.

 

As patients flood hospitals, healthcare workers are going through large volumes of personal protective equipment (PPE) and medical supplies. At the peak of the outbreak in Wuhan, China, where the virus first emerged, hospitals generated six times more medical waste than they did before the crisis. The numbers haven’t been crunched in the US yet, but waste processing company Stericycle says it’s already seeing a significant increase.

 

At this time, it’s not possible to generate less medical waste while still protecting public health and safety. It is possible, however, to recycle and upcycle other kinds of waste into materials that can help fight the outbreak while preventing processing facilities from being overloaded.

 

How Localities are Dealing with Medical Waste

Communities across the world are handling COVID-19 medical waste in different ways. In Italy, hospitals and waste processing groups are treating it as potentially infectious. Teams are suiting up in full protective gear and sealing the waste in plastic bags, storing it separately from other waste, then hermetically sealing it into boxes.

 

In Singapore, waste processing workers are also in full protective gear, and the bins they move are double-lined with plastic. As soon as the bins arrive at the processing plant, they’re placed on automatic feeders that send the waste into an incinerator and disinfect the bins afterward.

 

US communities have received advice from the CDC to treat COVID-19 medical waste the same as any other medical waste. Fortunately, precautions around medical waste are fairly strict in the US already. That means processing groups tend to be concerned not so much with infection, but with what might happen if a surge overwhelms the system and waste needs to get processed faster than the system allows.

 

Upcycling Ideas for the Fight Against COVID-19

As the world struggles to find treatments and vaccines to fight coronavirus, the upcycling industry has been developing ideas for products that can help prevent infection and support care efforts in hospitals.

 

Upcycled Hospital Wards

One of the most clever upcycling ideas on the market today is the Modular Adaptable Convertible (MAC) ward, which Miniwiz developed in collaboration with Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Taiwan Design Research Institute, and the Center for Innovation at Fu Jen Catholic University Hospital.

 

The MAC ward is a building kit that hospitals can deploy and assemble quickly, transforming any space into a fully functional hospital ward in 24 hours or less. These wards in their finished form can be isolation rooms, ICUs, or general care wards as hospital needs dictate. Each is COVID-ready and can become a negatively pressurized cleanroom designed to reduce the risk of contamination.

 

Miniwiz took care to include as many post-consumer building materials as possible in the design. The wall panels are made of recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET) nanocoated with recycled aluminum and paired with an ultraviolet self-cleaning system.

 

Designed to help make the hospital experience more comfortable for patients, the wards feature smart lighting and soothing art designs. They also incorporate Miniwiz sound absorption paneling, which keeps noise down and can help patients rest and recover.

 

Miniwiz created the first model for the MAC wards in under two months. The design launched in Taipei in early May and was placed on the 12th floor of the FJCU Hospital. The unit can be set up in any building or even outdoors, making it possible for hospitals to use parking lots and other open areas to safely and comfortably house patients.

 

Recycled Light Towers for Triage Facilities

In the US, hospitals are expanding their usable square footage using triage tents, where healthcare workers can screen potential COVID-19 patients before admitting them to the hospital. One of those hospitals is Keck Medicine of USC in Los Angeles.

 

The triage tents at Keck medicine are in use 24 hours a day and get their nighttime illumination from portable light tower trailers. These trailers were recovered and refurbished by electronics recycling innovator Eric Lundgren.

 

Lundgren had found the trailers in unusable condition after the company that created them went out of business. Lundgren bought the trailers from the company’s investors and transported them to Los Angeles where he retrofitted them with upcycled lithium-ion batteries.

 

Lundgren created his battery packs by recovering unused batteries from discarded products, then testing all of the cells in those packs and harvesting the usable cells. He turned those cells into refurbished packs that have seven times the power of a traditional battery and cost one-fifth as much to operate.

 

The retrofitting process gave rise to Lundgren’s new company, Big Battery, which has donated all of the upcycled batteries that now power Keck Medicine’s triage tents.

 

Antiviral Phone Pouches

One of the ways you can get COVID-19 is by touching a surface that has viral particles on it and then touching your mouth, nose, or eyes. Scientists believe that the virus can live on plastic for up to three days and on glass for up to four, which means that your phone could easily become a dangerous transmission vector.

 

To help people protect themselves, Miniwiz and the One Ocean Foundation have designed an antiviral phone pouch made from upcycled materials.

 

The rPET used for this project is the same medical-grade, post-consumer plastic that Miniwiz has used to design the MAC wards. It eliminates 99.9% of germs on the phone and, in turn, on your fingertips.

 

PPE from Recycled Plastic

The shortage of PPE has been another common thread in news stories during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that shortage remains a concern even as many US states start the move toward reopening. To help, recycling group Precious Plastic is repurposing their plastic processing machines so they can be used to manufacture PPE and other anti-viral equipment.

 

Precious Plastic is working on several designs including face shields, which rest on the forehead and hold plastic sheets that extend down over the wearer’s face. The sheeting provides a barrier against the splatter of infectious droplets, a major risk for healthcare workers who treat patients with COVID-19. The barrier not only reduces the chance of infection but also helps to keep the wearer’s mask dry, thus potentially reducing the rate at which workers have to discard their masks.

 

The Precious Plastic machines churn out face shields 75 times faster than 3D printers, and workspaces across Europe and beyond are producing them as fast as they can.

 

In the Canary Islands, off the coast of Africa, makers in a Precious Plastic workspace are working to produce 3,000 face shields for hospitals, government agencies, and private sector companies. The Gran Canaria group is also developing prototypes for ventilator machines used in ICUs when patients can’t breathe on their own. Hospitals around the world are already using these upcycle-based designs.

 

Precious Plastics groups in Europe continue to churn out tens of thousands of much-needed face shields. A group in Dresden, Germany, is working on producing 20,000 visors for medical professionals in the area, and machine manufacturers in Austria are in mass production mode to keep the effort going.

 

Using the same machines, groups in Greece and Switzerland are collaborating to create no-touch door handles. By making it possible for people to enter and leave buildings without touching shared surfaces, these touch-free doors could reduce transmission risk in high-traffic areas.

 

The Ongoing Need for Upcycling

The COVID-19 pandemic is nowhere near over. Even as lockdown restrictions start to loosen and scientists make progress toward prevention and treatment, authorities continue to report new cases. Fortunately, people are continuing to rise to the challenge of fighting the disease, and innovators continue to come up with clever upcycling ideas, both on large and small scales.

 

As Eric Lundgren of Big Battery proved, it just takes one person to come up with a new upcycling idea. Even DIY-level upcycling can have a big impact, as evidenced by recent University of Vermont MBA graduate Nathaniel Moore, who upcycled his graduation gown so that a healthcare worker could use it as PPE. Moore went on to launch Gowns for Good, which has now gathered and upcycled 10,000 gowns for frontline workers.

 

Miniwiz is proud to join Moore, Lundgren, and the commercial PPE industry in creating innovative, sustainable solutions during this difficult time. In addition to the launch of our MAC wards, we’re also planning a new medical waste upcycling plant in Southeast Asia. With our turnkey upcycling solutions, from commercial products to construction materials and entire buildings, we will continue developing new ways to reduce waste while supporting the fight against COVID.

 

Miniwiz welcomes inquiries about our services and products, whether you’re a hospital looking for a portable isolation ward or a private citizen seeking an effective way to protect your cell phone while you’re out shopping for essentials. Give us a call or send us an email today for more information.

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