UNLIKE REFUSING A straw at a restaurant, it’s difficult to cut down on plastic while strapped unconscious to an operating table. Single-use plastic is facing more scrutiny than it ever has, and the medical industry could be the area where individual consumers have the least say. Practice Greenhealth , a non-profit that works to make hospitals more sustainable, estimates that 25 per cent of the waste generated by a hospital is plastic. A study on a single hysterectomy found that the procedure can produce up to nine kilograms of waste, most of which is plastic. Single-use plastic can be an attractive option for hospitals—cheap, durable, and easily tossed out—and each new fresh plastic container or covering offers a newly sterile environment. That’s why clinicians cover themselves and everything they use in plastic. Yet for all the ways plastic has revolutionised the medical industry over the past century, it’s now […]