Plastics are essential to modern healthcare, enabling safe, sterile, and reliable care across hospitals, clinics, and community settings. From gloves and gowns to IV bags, packaging and rigid devices, they support infection prevention and patient safety. Yet their widespread single-use has major consequences: mounting waste, rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and escalating costs.
This report quantifies the environmental and financial impacts of single-use plastics in the European and North American healthcare sectors across seven high-volume product categories, and highlights five circular economy strategies that could, by 2040, cut single-use plastics waste by 53%, reduce GHG emissions by 55%, and deliver annual savings of $18 billion without compromising patient safety.
