Background and purpose: Hospitals and health-care centers are the major sources of hazardous waste generation. Hospital wastes should be collected and disposed under certain conditions. The aim of this study was to investigate hospitals waste generation in Gorgan, Iran.

Materials and methods: The study was performed in 8 hospitals including 3 educational hospitals and 5 non-educational hospitals in Gorgan, 2014. Waste generation was investigated in 4 consecutive months, three times a week. Weighting was performed 384 times (48 times in each hospital). Mann-Whitney and nonparametric correlation test were used for data analysis.

Results: The results showed 40.27% hazardous and 59.73% general wastes were generated in hospitals. The mean rates of waste general and hazardous generation were 2.63 and 1.03 kg/bed/day, respectively. These rates in educational and non-educational hospitals were 3.75 and 1.96 kg/bed/day, respectively.

Conclusion: Generation of hazardous waste was found to be high in Gorgan hospitals. Also, the educational hospitals generated more waste than non-educational hospitals. Therefore, necessary measures should be taken to reduce the generation of waste, especially hazardous waste.