Gastrointestinal endoscopy is a major contributor to the large amount of medical waste generated by the hospital activities. Simple measures like implementation of waste segregation may impact substantially on sustainability without affecting the quality of gastrointestinal endoscopic procedures.

We conducted a prospective exploratory study on the amount of waste generated in the three rooms of our Endoscopy Unit from 1 September to 31 October 2025. At the end of each day of endoscopic activity, we weighed the amount of waste in each one of the segregated fractions.

We segregated the waste produced in our Endoscopy Unit into regulated medical waste and non-regulated medical waste, including paper, plastic and non-recyclable waste. Over the course of the study period (61 days), the Endoscopy Unit was fully active on 53 days. The overall amount of waste produced by our Endoscopy Unit was 1830 kg of regulated medical waste, 1142 kg of paper, 954 kg of plastic, and 636 kg of non-recyclable waste. Over the course of one year, this would mean approximately 10980 kg of regulated medical waste, 6852 kg of paper, 5724 kg of plastic, and 3816 kg of non-recyclable waste.

Our small exploratory study confirms that routine gastrointestinal endoscopy activity produces very large amounts of waste. Simple measures like the implementation of a structured protocol for waste segregation lead to the efficient management of medical waste, and contribute substantially to improve the environmental sustainability of gastrointestinal endoscopy. Our preliminary data provide the basis for a larger analysis aiming to quantify the reduction in greenhouse gas emission after the adoption of the current waste segregation protocol in our Endoscopy Unit.