Some class G medical waste is considered highly and extremely hazardous waste.

The new list includes waste from equipment, machinery and other products that are subject to special control; laboratory waste and chemical residues; waste from personal protective equipment not included in other groups; waste from the elimination of mercury and mercury-containing compounds; waste from batteries, including vehicles; waste from battery electrolytes and batteries.

According to current legislation, legal entities and individual entrepreneurs must register in the federal information system for the management of waste of I and II hazard classes (FGIS "OPVK") and enter into an agreement with the federal environmental operator - FSUE "FEO" in order to dispose of waste of these classes.

The regulation on class G medical waste will enter into force on 1 September 2026.

Medical waste is divided into five categories, which are classified from "A" to "D". According to current sanitary standards, class "G" medical waste includes toxicologically hazardous waste from 1 to 4 hazard classes, including mercury-containing items, devices and equipment, medicinal, diagnostic, disinfectant agents, waste from the operation of equipment, as well as other toxicologically hazardous waste generated in the process of medical, pharmaceutical activities, production of drugs and medical devices.

Regulators have been adjusting the regulatory framework for the medical waste market with varying activity over the past few years. The result of this work was a package of amendments that were introduced in August 2024 to Federal Law No. 89 "On Production and Consumption Waste", Federal Law No. 52 "On the Sanitary and Epidemiological Welfare of the Population" and Federal Law No. 323 "On the Fundamentals of Protecting Citizens' Health", and immersed the medical waste sector in the current legislation on waste management.

According to the new regulations, class A medical waste (epidemiologically safe) generated during the activities of legal entities and individual entrepreneurs is transferred by them to regional operators for handling municipal solid waste. Class B (epidemiologically hazardous) and class C (extremely epidemiologically hazardous) medical waste is subject to mandatory disinfection, class G (toxicologically hazardous) is disinfected in cases stipulated by sanitary regulations. Disinfection is carried out either by the persons whose activities generated the waste or by those authorized to carry out this procedure.