The financial and environmental costs of reusable and single-use plastic anaesthetic drug trays

Abstract

We modelled the financial and environmental costs of two commonly used anaesthetic plastic drug trays. We proposed that, compared with single-use trays, reusable trays are less expensive, consume less water and produce less carbon dioxide, and that routinely adding cotton and paper increases financial and environmental costs. We used life cycle assessment to model the financial and environmental costs of reusable and single-use trays. From our life cycle assessment modelling, the reusable tray cost (Australian dollars) $0.23 (95% confidence interval [CI] $0.21 to $0.25) while the single-use tray alone cost $0.47 (price range of $0.42 to $0.52) and the single-use tray ..