Rethinking Single-Use Plastics in Research and Healthcare

Author: Cindy Lu

During my time in college conducting research and working in clinical settings, one thing has consistently stood out to me: how much plastic is used and discarded in a single day.

Single-use plastics are everywhere in research. On a typical day in the lab, I use at least three pairs of gloves, multiple needles and syringes for injections, plastic tubes, petri dishes, media bottles, pipette tips, and layers of packaging. I was following experiments optimized many times over for sterility, accuracy, and reproducibility, even if they were at the expense of sustainability.

In the medical setting, I notice the same pattern: single-use plastics are deeply embedded in day-to-day operations. Syringes, IV bags, gloves, masks, specimen containers, disposable drapes, and countless other materials are essential to maintaining sterility and delivering safe treatment. As a hospital volunteer, my main job was restocking gloves, and I was always surprised by how quickly supplies depleted.

Recognizing how useful single-use plastics are in scientific research and patient care, I keep returning to the same question: how can we address the environmental cost of single-use plastics in spaces where they are so evidently tied to safety and quality?

Based on what I have seen, the answer is not to ask researchers, nurses, physicians, or technicians to compromise protocols that have been in place for years. Many of those protocols exist for good reason, especially to maintain sterility and safety. But we can begin identifying unnecessary single-use items, such as materials included in medical kits that a particular clinic or hospital does not actually use.

We should also focus on alternatives to conventional plastics by using biodegradable and bio-based materials. While working in a nanoscale engineering lab at Columbia, my main project involved synthesizing PLGA, a biodegradable polymer commonly used in biomedical applications like safe drug delivery. PLGA and its derivatives are currently being investigated for broader usages in green packaging and patient sutures. I am optimistic that we can do better in healthcare by creating better materials to begin with.

Medicine and science are fields built on problem-solving. We think about how to improve therapies and patient outcomes, and do not simply accept the status quo. Clinicians and researchers are always looking to innovate, and the same should be said for sustainability. Single-use plastics in healthcare may seem indispensable now, but that does not mean the current model is the right or only possible option.

As a future healthcare professional, I also think about who should carry these conversations forward. Clinicians have enormous influence within healthcare systems. Patients trust their physicians, and hospitals and clinics listen when clinicians advocate for better practices. Sustainability is often not grouped with patient care, but environmental health and human health are deeply connected. Air pollution, natural disasters, and other climate change events contribute to respiratory disease, cardiovascular illness, and other long-term health effects that eventually appear in patients.

If clincians and scientists have the creativity to innovate life-saving treatments, they also have the capacity to rethink the materials that make that work possible. Clinician leaders have an important role to play in the fight against single-use plastics, not necessarily by asking their frontline teams to work around plastics altogether, but by advocating for upstream solutions, such as reducing unnecessary waste or investing in sustainable plastic alternatives.

Sources:
1. Biodegradable Alternatives to Plastic in Medical Equipment: Current State, Challenges, and the Future
2. Greenhouse Gas Reduction Potential of Novel CO2-Derived Polylactic-co-glycolic Acid (PLGA) Plastics

About the Author: Cindy Lu is the Practice Support Specialist with My Green Doctor and a junior at Columbia University studying Neuroscience & Behavior and Business Management. She is also President Emeritus of the youth nonprofit Climate Change Task Force. After graduation, she will pursue her medical education at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City where she hopes to become a socially conscious physician and continue advancing sustainability in healthcare.

The post Rethinking Single-Use Plastics in Research and Healthcare first appeared on My Green Doctor.