Biohazard Garbage Bags

Under India's Bio-Medical Waste Management Rules, 2016, yellow bags take anatomical waste, soiled dressings, expired medicines and chemical waste. Red bags take contaminated recyclable waste such as tubing, catheters, IV sets, urine bags, syringes without needles and gloves. Sharps go into white translucent puncture-proof containers, and broken glass and metal implants go into blue marked cardboard boxes, not bags. Check your State Pollution Control Board's current guidance, because rules get amended.

Yes. The 2016 rules phased out chlorinated plastic bags for biomedical waste, because burning them gives off dioxins and furans. Chlorine comes from PVC. Our biohazard bags are made from polyethylene (PE) film, not PVC, so there is no chlorine in the plastic.

Size the bag to the bin so it folds over the rim. Measure around the top of the bin and take half of that as the flat width of the bag. For the length, take the bin height plus half its diameter, plus about 10 cm to fold over. Our common size is 15 x 22 inch, and we make other sizes to order.

Use the thickness your State Pollution Control Board or waste treatment operator asks for, and tell us that figure. Rules on bag thickness are linked to India's plastic waste rules, which have changed over the years. Heavy or wet waste also needs a thicker bag than light, dry waste, so mention what goes in the bag.

Yes for the symbol, colour, text and your name. We print the biohazard or cytotoxic symbol and wording such as "Infectious Waste" by rotogravure. Rotogravure prints the same design on every bag, so a unique barcode for each bag is usually applied as a label at the hospital or treatment facility, as the CPCB barcode guidelines allow.