Reusable Textile Products Reduce Environmental Risks

ARTA’s comparative life cycle assessments (LCAs) have demonstrated that reusable healthcare textiles offer critically-needed reductions in energy and water consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and waste for nearly a decade. But its message that “The Future is Not Disposable” has never resonated as strongly as it does today.

The healthcare industry is among the most carbon-intensive service sectors in the industrialized world, responsible for nearly 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions and 9% to 10% of domestic greenhouse gas emissions, which arise directly from healthcare facilities and indirectly from their supply chains of goods and services. And the problem has been getting worse. U.S. healthcare greenhouse gas emissions rose 6% from 2010 to 2018, and are now the highest among industrialized nations, according to HealthAffairs.

Medical waste is a particularly important issue because it results in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions that stay in the earth’s atmosphere for tens to hundreds of years, warming the climate and impacting present and future generations.

Broader adoption of reusable textiles would help because products like reusable gowns, cleanroom coveralls, and incontinence pads  reduce solid waste by 84% to 97% versus single use items because a reusable textile is used many times, while a disposable item is used once and sent to the landfill or incinerated.

Numerous proponents including policymakers, scientific researchers, some healthcare providers, and industry associations have shared their concerns about the need for the industry to reduce its waste, conserve natural resources and prevent exposure to hazardous materials and recommend life cycle assessment as a tool for decision making in procurement.

The Association of Perioperative Registered Nurses (AORN) has been a strong advocate for the environment for 20 years. It’s current position statement says, “All healthcare professionals have an ethical and professional responsibility to protect patients’ health through advocacy. Because human health is affected by and is dependent on the surrounding environment, healthcare professionals must actively work to incorporate best practices that mitigate negative environmental impact.”

AORN’s list of environmentally responsible practices includes using LCA data when evaluating products for purchase and use, selecting reusable equipment, supplies, and materials when they are equivalent in performance and safety, and reprocessing equipment, supplies, and materials.

But few of the statements have been starker than The World Health Organization’s 2022 report on global medical waste. WHO’s 70-page analysis found that the COVID-19 pandemic led to large increases in medical waste – tens of thousands of tons of extra medical waste composed of PPE and COVID-19 testing and vaccination supplies that placed an extraordinary burden on healthcare waste management systems around the world.

The WHO noted that the waste volume it tracks, based on the United Nations (UN) procurement system, doesn’t include the much larger amount of COVID commodities purchased outside of the UN system and therefore represents only a small fraction of the incremental volume of waste.

The report warned that one in three healthcare facilities globally doesn’t safely manage existing healthcare waste loads, much less the increased volumes generated by the pandemic. Today diposable medical products and packaging are “straining under-resourced healthcare facilities and exacerbating environmental impacts from solid waste,” said the report. The potential impact is not only to healthcare workers but to entire communities around poorly managed landfills and waste disposal sites based on contaminated air, poor water quality and disease-carrying pests.

The WHO urged healthcare facilities to incorporate safer and more environmentally sustainable waste management practices into their pandemic response to protect human and environmental health. It highlighted the need for investment in non-burn waste treatment technologies, a focus on eco-friendly packaging and shipping, the adoption of safe and reusable PPE, and use of recyclable or biodegradable materials.

Some keen observers of industry practices have estimated the country’s future need for gloves, isolation gowns and face masks should another surge of COVID-19 infections strike. Johns Hopkins estimated that a single 100-day COVID-19 surge would require an additional 321 million isolation gowns on top of baseline isolation gown use in hospital inpatients, emergency departments, emergency medical services, outpatient visits, and nursing homes in the U.S.

That sentiment was echoed in a November, 2020 meta study conducted by Stanford University researchers in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study, peer reviewed and published in Frontiers of Public Healh, assessed whether disposable isolation gowns are more effective barriers than reusable gowns. “No existing literature shows nonwoven (disposable) fabrics to be safer than impermeable woven fabrics, especially woven polyester,” the study concluded.

Wrote the Stanford researchers, “The circumstances of the pandemic forewarn the need to shift our single-use PPE practices to standardized reusable applications. Ultimately, sustainable forms of protective equipment can help us prepare for future crises that challenge the resilience of the healthcare system.”