I work in an operating room, and have been around long enough to see multiple pieces of perfectly good equipment get replaced just because it hit the manufacturer’s end-of-life date. I’m talking things like a several-hundred-thousand dollar microscope for microsurgery. Basically that date means if the microscope fucks up somehow, the vendor takes zero liability, and any legal expenses fall onto the hospital… so we trash it and buy another one. Rinse and repeat after another few years. That end-of-life date is always crazy early, and is like that 100% because the manufacturer knows hospitals would rather just treat a quarter million dollar microscope as disposable than accept liability for an equipment fault. The waste is unreal.

Does this make hospitals good for dumpster diving? I’m only half kidding, but really, how would you dispose of this stuff? Donate to education?

No idea how they dispose of it. I’ve asked my immediate management chain if I can take damaged/pitted instruments that need to be replaced to donate to the local colleges - Anatomy & Physiology classes all have a lab component to dissect something, and the school I went to had instruments that were absolute garbage. The answer was no… We just put instruments that need to be displayed of in a red bin with other sharps like needles, and the bins are shipped off somewhere, probably to be incinerated. Bigger stuff line equipment, we send to the biomedical engineering department for outprocessing. From there, no idea. Probably land fill. I wouldn’t dumpster dive at a hospital though. It’ll be a sea of ruptured catheter bags, linens saturated with poop, and just all manner of pathogens. And probably sharps - that stuff is supposed to go in sealed red bins, but all it takes is one lazy employee and you’ve got yourself an HIV+ needle stick.