Klimatavtryck från engångsförkläden i sjuk-vården

Abstract

Currently Swedish healthcare uses large amounts of disposable products, many of which are made from plastic. For example, Region Uppsala annually uses 3,2 million disposable plastic aprons. Currently these aprons are manufactured from fossil based polyethene plastic. This causes emissions of 270 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents over their life cycle from extraction of raw material to end of life through incineration. If substituting the fossil polyethene with plastic manufactured from renewable material, there is a potential to reduce the climate impact from disposable plastic aprons. Current study has compared disposable plastic aprons made from fossil polyethene with aprons made from renewable raw materials. Two renewable plastics were evaluated, disposable apron made of polyethene manufactured from bioethanol from Brazilian sugar cane and disposable aprons made of the renewable plastic polylactide (PLA) origination from sugar cane grown in Thailand. The result is that using biopolyethene reduces climate impact with 60 % and PLA aprons with 40 % compared to fossil polyethene. PLA has a component that currently is of fossil origin. If in the future this component is substituted with a renewable component there is a potential to reduce the PLA climate impact with as much as 20 % compared to current reduction in comparison to fossil polyethene