What is it about?
Healthcare manufacturing is important for employment, research, and economic activity in Ireland (particularly in areas outside of the main urban area of Dublin). In fact, Galway is a leading global hub for medtech research and development. However, while there are amazing people helping people fight disease and live longer and healthier, there is not much activity to reduce these products' environmental impacts, and particularly making products more circular (keeping products in use for as long as possible, reusing where possible, redesigning for multiple lives for products and the raw materials). The study engaged with various people at all levels working in healthcare manufacturing in Ireland via a survey, to see how prepared these companies are to become more circular.
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Why is it important?
Medical waste (pre-pandemic) contributed to 11% of waste in Ireland, which is on the increase. Circularity is important as we are using way more stuff that the planet can sustain. This is predicted to increase massively over the next 10 year by another 50%. We need to rethink everything, how we design our stuff, how it is used, and what happens at the end of its useful life. In order to make a change, we need to figure out where we are at in the first place.
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Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Saving Lives and Saving the Planet: The Readiness of Ireland’s Healthcare Manufacturing Sector for the Circular Economy, September 2020, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1007/978-981-15-8131-1_19.
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