Daniels Sharpsmart Officially Opens

It’s lucky number 13 for Daniels Sharpsmart, which officially opened its newest location in Forks Township Tuesday.

The Australian-based company held a facilities tour and ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Conroy Place location to celebrate the opening of its 13^th facility in the nation.

Daniels Sharpsmart constructs and rents reusable medical waste containers and provides medical waste collection and disposal to medical facilities.

“We become a part of our community,” said Dan Kennedy, vice president of Daniels Sharpsmart. “We love to hire people from the community.”

A total of 50 employees will be hired once the facility is fully operating. So far, 20 employees have started working, according to Kennedy. The location will be a 24-hour, five-day-a-week business with a cleanup crew on Saturdays operating one shift, he added.

“This has been several months in the making,” said Kennedy.

the township approved a conditional-use application from the company to move into the former Easton Plating and Metal building. The application was approved with two main conditions. The company has agreed to provide a detailed emergency plan to the township fire and police departments and the township police and fire departments will conduct annual safety walk-throughs of the facility.

The business still has to obtain some permits from the state Department of Environmental Protection to run a medical waste facility, Kennedy added.

“This has been a perfect fit for us,” Kennedy said of moving to the township.

“We really believe we picked the right spot,” said Marcus Koch, the company's chief executive officer.

All of the materials on site will be disposed of in a sterile, non-hazardous manner at landfills, Kennedy said.

“The process is cleaner than the residential waste at your curbside,” he said.

Any anatomical waste is also carefully processed and sent to a Baltimore-based business for incineration, according to Kennedy.

The business has also developed a system that converts water to steam. The business will use some 35,000 gallons of water per day. With the conversion system, water that would have otherwise been discharged into the municipal water and sewer system has been reduced to 3,500 gallons of water per day, according to Kennedy.