Plastics have emerged as an indispensable part of health care: They are lightweight, durable, and can be made sterile. But they can also cause significant harm to human health, the economy, and the earth's environment. This is embedded in their entire lifecycle, from the hazards posed by the extraction and refining of petrochemicals to the materials and chemicals used to make plastics, and disposal, where plastics can emit chemicals of concern if burned or disposed improperly or break down into microplastics.
In the health care sector, rapid growth in plastic use is primarily driven by the demand for single-use medical devices. They are present in products ranging from syringes, surgery gowns, and gloves to the packaging used to wrap food. Hazardous chemicals in plastics not only threaten the environment but can also threaten patient safety. For example, PVC, a plastic polymer, requires many additives to give it properties like flexibility. Plasticizers used in medical devices can be as much as 40% by weight of a PVC product, and it was demonstrated that they can leach from medical devices and result in direct patient exposure.
How can the health care sector reduce its impact?
The health sector must reduce and detoxify the plastics used in patient care, and prioritize reusability where possible for the plastic products that are used. Designing for reuse and recyclability must be a major focus.
Health Care Without Harm works with health care systems and professionals to address the impact of plastic use in the sector through different actions:
- Sustainable procurement including adopting safer alternatives.
- Reducing the use of unnecessary plastics and waste management.
- Market transformation.
- Policy advocacy.
Health Care Without Harm promotes a waste hierarchy focused on redesigning, rethinking, and eliminating unnecessary products as a critical first step in addressing the plastics crisis. This framework calls for the following:
- Elimination of all problematic and unnecessary plastic items.
- Products must be non-toxic to avoid continually recirculating hazardous chemicals through the economy and the environment.
- Innovation to ensure that the plastics are reusable, recyclable, or compostable.
- Promote plastics that are being circulated in the economy and out of the environment for as long as possible.
- Plastics that cause the most significant environmental and human health damage should be phased out.
- Single-use plastics should be avoided.
- Polymers should be able to be recycled to a high standard using local infrastructure.
- Packaging reduction and prioritizing reusable schemes are crucial.
Image: Health Care Without Harm Europe (2021) Measuring and reducing plastics in the healthcare sector
Health Care Without Harm and its partners promote safe recycling as a central part of sustainable health care waste management. After the waste stream has been reduced to the extent possible, and items are reused, as much as one-third of the remaining waste can be recycled, and another third is organic, which can be biodigested, leaving only one-third needing to be landfilled.
Frequently asked questions: Plastic and health
Some of our initiatives
This initiative* aims at transforming the health care sector into a model for the sustainable production and consumption of textiles. The project includes researching, piloting, and scaling reusable medical textiles in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Europe to curb the plastic pandemic and promote the transition to sustainable forms of production.
The project seeks to reduce and prevent the use of single-use medical textiles by switching to existing reusable alternatives, transforming the sector’s dependency and overreliance on plastic and toxic materials. Health Care Without Harm and its global network of partners will guide and support health care providers across different geographies in following the waste hierarchy (rethink/redesign, reduce, reuse, recycle) and target medical textiles, which are one of the top six plastic items used in health care and can account for up to 10% of total hospital plastic waste. Read more.
*This project is funded by the Norwegian Retailers' Environment Fund (NREF).
As trusted voices in society, health care professionals play a pivotal role to raise community and institutional awareness on the impacts of plastic pollution. By making decisions and advocating for reduced plastic production and consumption, proper waste management, and the promotion of sustainable alternatives, health professionals can help mitigate the health risks associated with plastics. Their advocacy can drive policy changes, influence consumer behavior, and pave the way for a healthier and more sustainable future for individuals and communities worldwide.
Health Care Without Harm leads and co-leads different professional networks advocating for healthier systems and practices, and develops different campaigns, guidelines, and resources to support their work.