Maribor uni and hospital team up to make Covid tests recyclable

The Maribor Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and the University Meical Centre Maribor are involved in a project that will make it possible to recycle rapid antigen tests. The single-use Covid-19 tests are currently treated as hazardous waste and incinerated, wasting €15,000 per million tests in plastic and gold.

Antigen tests currently cannot be recycled as the two main materials they are made from, white plastic and nanoparticles, cannot be separated using existing technology. Antibody labelled gold nanoparticles detect a viral protein and show up as a red line when the sample is...