Thank you for this interesting question! If we come to a point where these biological nano or microrobots are used in clinics, the treatment of hospital waste would technically become a concern. Once out of the body, the bacteria-based microrobots described in our study could easily be disposed of by sterilization techniques, such as using a detergent solution or by simply heating to sterilize. So you basically treat it as any other hospital waste.

I mentioned in another answer, so I am repeating that bacteria should be removed from the host body after the medical task is completed, therefore another concept, which is named termination switches, could be also added to bacteria to terminate them after they had carried out their task through NIR-triggered hyperthermia, antibiotics or bacterial lysis. THis way once the agents are outside of the body, they are already harmless.

Hope this answers your question!
All the best,
/birgül