Sticky value: plastics and circular healthcare at Aarhus symposium
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After the Single Use researcher Dani Farrow presented a paper titled ‘Sticky value: exploring plastic entanglements in the healthcare system’ at the symposium ‘The Anthropology of Plastics: Ontologies, Socio-Materialities, Political Ecologies’, organised by colleagues Gauri Pathak and Aarti Laktar in the Department of Global Studies at University of Aarhus.
The informal symposium brought together researchers working on anthropological perspectives on plastics, pollution, materiality, and environmental politics. Fellow After the Single Use researchers Alice Street and Cat Acheson also contributed to discussions during the event.
Dani’s presentation examined how circular economy narratives are increasingly shaping healthcare policy and sustainability initiatives within Scotland and the NHS. National strategies now advocate a transition away from disposable plastics towards reusable systems, while local grassroots projects attempt to address specific forms of healthcare waste within hospitals and clinical departments.
The paper argued, however, that practices of reuse are often far more difficult to implement than policy rhetoric suggests. As single-use plastics became normalised within healthcare settings, they reshaped not only clinical routines but also procurement systems, financial models, regulatory frameworks, infrastructures, and understandings of hygiene and safety. Disposability became embedded across multiple layers of healthcare practice and governance.
Through ethnographic engagement with attempts to shift from disposable to reusable systems, the presentation explored how efforts to “revalue” materials also raise broader questions about labour, care, and institutional priorities. Dani highlighted the often-overlooked work required to sustain reuse systems, including decontamination and sterilisation labour, and asked how this work is valued economically and morally within contemporary healthcare systems.
The paper further examined how budgetary pressures, procurement logics, and regulatory assumptions can reinforce disposable systems even when sustainability goals advocate otherwise. Rather than focusing only on the value of plastic materials themselves, the research explored how questions of human health, planetary health, labour, and institutional responsibility become deeply entangled within healthcare infrastructures.
