sick beings will never be zero waste.
I am in my local Zero Waste organization and have been since, I think, 2019/2020. I also used to make changes to have a low waste lifestyle and I wrote about these experiences here. Mixed results, and I gave some things up again. I am still conscious of it, but I've been more liberal with packaging for a while now. It also seems like businesses are regressing, because I used to get so many things in paper and cardboard, now so many are back to putting your food in plastic bowls... and since Covid, businesses have been understandably cautious and hesitant about accepting your own containers.
Anyway, whenever I am reminded of zero waste, I think of a very popular zero waste blogger back then (I actually don't know if she's still at it) who was able to collect a year's worth of waste in a mason jar, and it was one medicine blister for a brief flu or something, if I remember correctly. You can find many people participating in this experiment by searching for "annual waste jar". It was so big 2016-2019. WIRED actually wrote a great retrospective on it in 2023.
Then I think of me. I think of how there is a working group in the Zero Waste org that wants to tackle waste in healthcare. I think about how so much is wrapped in plastic because it is the best way to keep things sterile inside, and how easy it is to clean while being lightweight.
This is how many injectors I have already used up (minus three I can't get out of the sharps container anymore):
They're a bit of glass, a whole big piece of plastic tube, a plastic cap with some aluminium, and a needle. This waste doesn't include the blisters of Prednisone and Azathioprine and the few Budesonide sachets I needed last year, my Aspirin, Ibuprofen and Paracetamol waste, all my Nutriflex and blood bags and other things I needed at the hospital, and all the masks and their wrappers I go through to keep myself safe in public closed spaces because I am immunosuppressed.
Even if I reused everything, was able to buy everything without packaging or filled into my own glass containers, I would always be someone who generates a lot of waste. It sucks. If we don't find an alternative to plastic that serves the same job, or any way to make plastic less harmful, it'll just stay like that. Same for other difficult materials like aluminium. I can't optimize it away, and I can't vote with my wallet in a meaningful way when it's about life-saving medicine.
The reason I say 'beings' in the title is that it's obviously not just humans. My dog was very sick before he died and needed 3-4 different medications that racked up empty blisters, too. Everyone who has animals in their life knows how fast that can happen and how the medical needs continually grow.
The focus in the talks about waste and plastic pollution are usually about Temu bullshit and plastic straws and bottles, which makes sense, they probably make up most of the trash that we can definitely change or do without; but in my opinion, healthcare is a much bigger issue. We can regulate businesses, we can subsidize use of paper and glass, we can recycle more, we can attempt to convince people to shop differently or normalize different attitudes about packaging your groceries, whatever... but healthcare is so much more fragile and needs to be nuanced. It needs to be safe and we can't just throw our usual advice and vision at it. The things that get thrown away after use truly are necessary there and a lot needs to be single use; they cannot be reused, and sterility and cleaning is important. Being justified and having no alternatives doesn't erase the effect that waste has, though. We can't reduce the waste here, we can just change materials and reduce the impact, hopefully. This is not a choice I can make as a consumer - I am at the mercy of the powers that decide, and the mercy of science to find alternatives.
Edit: Russell sent me this great article by the Lowtech magazine that’s fitting!
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Published 28 Feb, 2025