In July 2024, University of Kentucky implemented a new healthcare enterprise policy allowing protected health information (PHI) to be destroyed following HIPAA-compliant guidelines if the film was created more than 30 years ago. This new policy created a sudden and large demand to dispose of the film which had been collected across all its healthcare facilities for decades.
As part of the University’s continued commitment to model environmental excellence and work towards reducing its landfill waste, UK HealthCare’s Department of Radiology worked diligently with UK Recycling to bring on a recycling partner to responsibly destroy and recycle the X-ray film, or radiographs. Since this project began in November 2024, over five and a half tons of material were sent to recycle.
“Since the move to digital radiography, finding resources that are still able to recycle processed film is a challenge. Before the assistance of UK Recycling to help find a vendor willing to recycle, all of the film would have been incinerated creating unnecessary environmental pollution.”
– Radiology Quality and Safety Director Leslie Anaskevich, UK HealthCare
X-ray film is more than just plastic. Once a film is processed to display an image, each film contains a deposit of silver. This silver is also what makes the film important material to recycle. As part of UK’s new recycling partnership, UK Recycling receives a credit for the silver recovered from the film. This type of revenue helps offset the costs of our recycling services and improves the financial sustainability of UK’s waste diversion operations.