School of Social and Political Science

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A new project led by School of Social and Political Science (SPS) academic Alice Street aims to reduce single-use plastics across the healthcare industry globally. 

The project, titled ‘After the Single Use’, is a Wellcome-funded collaboration across eight countries, harnessing critical approaches from anthropology and history to tackle the challenge of healthcare waste and pollution. This comes after a 2019 report by one of the project partners, international NGO Health Care Without Harm, found that the healthcare sector contributes between 4-5% of carbon emissions globally. Single-use items like syringes, diagnostic tests, face masks, and IV bags generate carbon emissions in their manufacture, transportation and disposal, and contribute to toxic pollution in our soil, air and seas. 

A Professor of Anthropology and Health at SPS, Alice Street will lead the project, which focuses on single-use plastics in our health systems, from aid posts in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, to well-resourced hospitals in the USA. The project will investigate how a throwaway healthcare culture became normal, what the impacts of single-use healthcare on the people who work in or use it are, and how we can transform our norms, values, systems and infrastructures to build a circular healthcare economy. 

The research team will draw on archival, ethnographic and arts-based research to: 

• examine the historical local and global circumstances that have contributed to the current crisis in medical waste 
• analyse the circulations and lifecycles of single-use medical technologies designed for disposal in landfill and incinerators 
• establish collaborations with policy makers, activists and engineers/designers to build circular healthcare solutions. 

Research in eight countries will explore both global interconnections between our health systems - for example, the use in clinics in Senegal of syringes manufactured in India -– and the unique perspectives particular places and their histories offer on the problems and solutions of healthcare waste. The project brings together a global research team from the University of New South Wales (Australia), University of Hyderabad (India), University of Geneva (Switzerland), University of Oslo (Norway), National Institute of Medical Research (Tanzania), CRCF (Senegal), PNG Institute of Medical Research (Papua New Guinea), Johns Hopkins University (USA).

The Edinburgh team – comprising Professor Street and three researchers - will focus on efforts to reduce plastic waste in the Scottish NHS and in international health policy. A co-working hub for the international team will be at SPS, providing central administrative support and a collaborative space for the project in Edinburgh. 

Professor Alice Street said: ‘The social sciences and humanities can bring valuable historical and social perspectives to the healthcare waste crisis, helping us understand how we got here and challenging assumptions about what change is possible’.