Modern Medicine Is Polluting The World With Plastic: Causes And Solutions
Many of us believe that we are personally responsible for the plastic pollution crisis that’s wreaking havoc on the ecosystem, thanks to our habit of buying food and other disposable items in plastic containers. However, it turns out that the medical and pharmaceutical industries are among the biggest culprits. These organizations use vast quantities of plastic to meet the needs of patients.
This post explores the causes of plastic pollution in medicine and then suggests some solutions.
Causes Of Medical Plastic Pollution
The main cause of medical plastic pollution is the need for inexpensive hygiene. Plastic seals implements, drugs, and devices from the outside world, preventing bacteria or anything else from getting inside. Manufacturers can also fill plastic with carbon dioxide or inert gasses to prevent pathogens inside from respiring and multiplying, in the unlikely event that any get through.
Almost everything used in medicine comes in a plastic container of some description, from inhalers to pills. Many of the leading medical devices also contain enormous quantities of plastic, including syringes, needles, and plasters.
Unlike conventional plastic items, these products require safe disposal and aren’t always suitable for recycling. As such, they often become microplastics when exposed to the sun, getting into the waterways, food supply, and our bodies.
Solutions To Medical Plastic Pollution
Fortunately, the medical community is toying with various solutions it hopes will reduce its dependence on plastic and help to create a cleaner planet. Here are some of the initiatives underway:
Develop New Packaging
One option is to change the nature of the packaging to make it more biodegradable and eliminate the risk of plastics entering the environment and causing long-term harm. Many companies are using bioscience lab equipment to create materials that act and behave like plastics, but also biodegrade once their storage function is over.
Getting this balance right is challenging. The purpose of plastic is to resist biodegradation – that’s what makes it such a popular material. However, there is hope that there can be a compromise – materials that behave like plastic for a couple of months, but then quickly break down once the medical sector uses them and sends them to landfill.
Safe Disposal
The medical industry is also looking for ways to improve the safe disposal of plastic waste. One option is to simply burn the waste and then capture the harmful toxins in filters before they enter the atmosphere.
At present, the number of incinerators available is low, but they could become more popular if researchers can clean them up. Removing harmful soot particles and then treating them could provide a way to reduce the risk to the environment while eliminating microplastics entirely.
Reduce The Use Of Plastic Packaging
Another obvious solution is to reduce the use of plastic packaging. The industry could explore going back to older methods, such as using glass vials and scaling up packaging production to reduce unit costs.
As mentioned above, there is also the prospect of using alternative biodegradable materials. These could give the industry the best of both worlds and put it on a more sustainable footing.
