
Background and Goal of Study
Anesthetists’ generate recyclable and non-recyclable plastic waste through inherent procedural necessities and drug preparation. We continuously handle and discard plasticized devices such as laryngeal mask airways, disposable laryngoscope blades, syringes and drapes on behalf of our patients.  It is estimated that operating rooms generate 25 – 30 % of a hospital’s total waste[ref]. We believe that the quantity of this waste is increasing annually in our institution. We aim to quantify the types and average amount of plastic waste generated by our department on an annual basis.  

Methods
We will identify a series of typical anaesthesia practice days at our institution. Our institution performs circa 30,000 surgical procedures per annum. We aim to collect, quantify and categorize all anaesthesia generated waste for a series of typical working days and extrapolate annual figures. We will follow our departmental waste as it enters the treatment process which includes landfill and incineration.  

Results 
Unfortunately medical waste is frequently deemed non-recyclable due to contaminant risk only. We believe much anaesthesia generated waste can fall outside this general classification with simple intervention by our profession such as sorting, or routinely reusing clean syringes within the same patient care episode. These types of simple interventions can have a positive environmental impact.
Air pollution is a high profile consequence and frequently discussed hazard of anaesthesia {REF}. However, we believe that our plastic waste signature may be of far greater consequence but is poorly quantified and understood to date.
We wish to present our results in poster format at ESA 2018.


04 / Anaesthesia and plasticized waste. Is it time we stop and think?