Waste opportunity: Can we design plastic out of healthcare?

Modern medicine has a dirty secret. While plastics have revolutionized healthcare, research increasingly shows that they’re also making us sick. Items such as PPE, syringes, gowns, IV bags and protective wrappings have allowed for a higher standard of sanitary patient care that vastly reduces the risk of cross-contamination. But all that plastic is adding up. Nearly a third of healthcare waste is plastics, and a report on 110 Canadian hospitals revealed the combined waste adds up to 87,000 tons of waste each year. These items break down into microplastics, which accumulate in our bodies and contribute to neurodegenerative, reproductive and overarching health problems. But what will it take to reimagine healthcare without plastic?

Featured in this episode: 

• Journalist Susan Freinkel is the author of Plastics: Toxic A Love Story, a book that traces the history of plastics through eight different objects, from the Frisbee to the IV bag, and examines how plastic negatively affects our lives.
• Dr. Ted Schettler is a physician and expert on the health risks of plastics and phthalates. He’s the scientific advisor at Health Care Without Harm, an organization that has dedicated more than 30 years to reducing healthcare’s environmental impact, including the removal of mercury from medical devices.
• An anesthesiologist for more than 20 years, Dr. Lyndia Dernis has seen first-hand the amount of plastic waste operating rooms produce. Currently practicing at St. Mary’s Hospital Centre in Montreal, Dernis has spearheaded the Anesthesia and Environment Committee, which has drastically reduced and recycled the hospital’s plastic waste since being implemented in 2020.
• Rashmi Prakash is the CEO of Aruna Revolution, a Halifax-based startup producing sustainable menstrual products. She’s also an adjunct professor at UBC, where she teaches a course on the impact of biomedical engineering on society, sustainability and environmental stewardship. As a biomedical engineer, Prakash has seen the surplus use of single-use plastic medical devices wrapped in single-use plastics, the layers of which she likens to a Russian doll.
• Aditi Sitolay is a masters student of medical device design and entrepreneurship at Imperial College London. She’s also the founder of Synoro Med, a Vancouver-based startup that specializes in designing sterile, reusable medical devices, including an early-prototype IV bag.

Further reading: 

• Solving healthcare’s emissions problem
• Your brain could have a spoon’s worth of microplastics. Here’s what to do about it
• We tested our blood for microplastics. This is what we found
• Microplastics: Are we facing a new health crisis — and what can be done about it?
• Prescription for plastic medical waste: How hospitals, medical suppliers are aiming to be greener

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