Plastic Essentiality and Forgotten Sterilisation Infrastructures

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At HSS 2026, Dani Farrow presented ‘Plastic Essentiality: How a Process of Forgetting Locked Healthcare Facilities into Single-Use Plastic Infrastructures’ as part of Plastic Amnesias II, chaired by Anne Kveim Lie.

The presentation explored the way in which single-use and disposable plastics have been entangled with —and integrated into— hospital laundries. Over time, hospital laundries have moved from reliance on single-use bedlinen as a contingency plan in times of worker strikes to the almost complete removal of sterile laundry services; only one sterile laundry remains in NHS Scotland, located within the smallest inland Health Board. This progression created a 'lock-in' scenario for single-use sterile textiles which NHS Scotland is currently tackling as part of its Green Healthcare programme.  

Farrow explored the motivation behind plastic entanglements with hospital laundries, asking how we might (re)value practices of care for materials and the labour this entails as part of proposed Circular Economy transitions in NHS Scotland.