Hospitals use countless single-use products. But why do these disposables remain the default?

In a new edition of the Sustainable Healthcare Podcast, Heidi Annala, PhD candidate at Wageningen University & Research and part of the ESCH-R consortium, explores the routines, protocols and organisational practices that keep single-use products in place.

Her fieldwork in hospital departments shows that single-use is often not really a choice. In the wards Heidi observed, there is often one product for a given clinical need, so the disposable is simply how the job gets done. As some staff told her: “Well, I don’t have a choice.”When there is only one product available for a particular clinical need, staff simply use what is there: “Well, I don’t have a choice.”

For Heidi, this means that creating more circular hospitals is not just about changing individual behaviour. Instead of “why is somebody not doing what I want them to do?”, Heidi asks “why is this way of doing things normal?”, which opens cultural, material and organisational routes to change.

Nobody changes a protocol alon. Changing these practices is rarely straightforward. Protocols involve multiple disciplines and responsibilities, including microbiology and infection prevention, and changes need to fit within the realities of clinical work.

Want to understand why single-use persists — and what it takes to change it? Listen to Heidi’s podcast interview: podcast