It all started with a dream and a secondhand washing machine…

Our Story

Our story defies typical founding narratives — we didn’t set out to make something faster, cheaper, or more profitable. Daniels Health began with an entrepreneurial engineer’s simple, earnest mission: to reduce sharps injuries caused by medical waste handling in healthcare settings.

For Dan Daniels, our business founder and the man who has spent over forty years tirelessly advocating for higher safety standards in healthcare, the vision was born in a rather serendipitous way. While studying for a microbiology degree by day and running a family-owned hotel by night, Dan had a chance encounter with a microbiologist by the name of Alan Perceval, which would forever alter his life course. Alan responded to Dan’s trading post listing for a second-hand washing machine, and the conversations that were to follow from the $45 exchange, birthed the bold and unconventional idea that microbiology, teamed with solution-driven innovation and entrepreneurialism, could save lives.

Some would call it an “A-ha!” moment —for Dan Daniels, he was simply presented with a reality which he felt he could not ignore. This confronting reality was the Aids epidemic in Australia in 1986. Previously unimagined, this disease brought a very real threat to the forefront of healthcare workers and patients’ concerns: that an encounter with a used syringe could be potentially deadly, or in the very least, irrevocably life-altering.

With founder Dan Daniels still guiding our vision for a safer tomorrow, Daniels Health stands as proof that a dream can transcend borders. Over more than three decades, our innovations in safer hospital waste management have helped shape global health regulations and redefine environmental standards. Our partnership and presence reflects not only our commitment to local healthcare worker safety but also our role in driving national change through smarter, more sustainable solutions. Together with teams in Australia, the United Kingdom, the USA, Canada, and New Zealand, we are united by a global mission: to make healthcare safer, one region at a time.