The Texas-sized ball of plastic known as the swirling Great Pacific Garbage Patch is shown off the coast of California in 2018. Health care in the United States primarily serves to treat diseases, but it should also promote health. In the era of climate change and industrialization, promoting health takes on new dimensions and urgency as rampant pollution threatens health in more immediate and visible ways.
The disproportionately heavy resource consumption of the nation’s health care system has been tolerated without consideration at a cost to society at large. This has landed us in a medical system with high-tech therapies for those who qualify and an endless assortment of disposable supplies. In fact, health care organizations in the U.S. produce approximately 14,000 tons of waste each day, of which an , including increased rates of cancers, respiratory issues and cardiovascular diseases.
We must aggressively pursue the use of safer supplies in health care and think about the full impact of our actions within local and global communities. Immediate steps can be taken in our own practices, such as opting for reusable rather than single-use plastic supplies and stewarding tests and prescriptions to improve efficiency and decrease waste.
At UC San Diego Health, we have created a sustainability department to help address such issues and are one of the first health systems in the country to have a medical director of sustainability. With a goal of becoming fossil-free by 2045, initiatives include utilizing renewable energy, eliminating single-use plastics by 2030 and stopping the use of desflurane, an anesthetic gas that is 2,500 times more harmful to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, among many others.