Heath(care) derivatives as hazardous waste: New understandings of chemical infrastructures and disease control paradigms in (global) health

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Alice Street was part  of the panel Health(care) derivatives as hazardous waste at HEAT 2025: Health, Environment, and Anthropology, a conference on planetary health and the environment.

This presentation examined how single-use plastics have become a foundational yet increasingly problematic chemical infrastructure within global healthcare. Drawing on historical and ethnographic research across eight countries, Alice Street traced how medical plastics were normalised, why their environmental and health harms remained obscured for so long, and how they are now being reframed as morally and materially unstable. The talk explored how these shifting understandings are reshaping debates about the future of sustainable healthcare.

Full Abstract:
Over the past sixty years, plastic polymers and additives have become an essential chemical infrastructure for a global healthcare economy premised on just-in-time supply of single-use devices. The tight association between plastics and medicine shows no signs of abating: the global medical plastics market is forecast to grow from USD 29.93 billion in 2019 to USD 54.29 billion by 2027. The vast proportion of these products are designed for disposal: single-use items such as dressings, incontinence pads, gloves, surgical tools, diagnostic tests, or catheters that are marketed for convenience, patient safety and accessible health care at an ostensibly affordable price. But growing evidence of the toxic effects of plastics on the environment and human health, and increasing awareness of the contribution that single-use devices make to greenhouse gas emissions, are increasingly calling this polymer substrate into question, posing difficult questions to people in the health care industry - from medical device manufacturers, to health workers and policy-makers -about the hidden costs of a system built on plastic. This paper presents a moral history of medical plastics, outlining how they became normalised and immune from concerns about environmental and human health harms for so long, and why, how and for whom health care plastics are now increasingly being recognised as morally dubious materials. Drawing on historical and ethnographic research with medical device manufacturers, campaigners, health workers and policy-makers across eight countries, the paper explores changing conceptions of medical plastics, from stable life-saving objects to leaky chemicals, and the value contestations through which health care futures are being reimagined ‘after the single-use’.