Sterilisers: infrastructures of reuse in hospital care

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After the Single Use researchers Alice Street and Jeremy Greene have contributed 'Sterilisers' to 'The Matter of Hospitals: An Alphabetical Investigation', edited by Anna Harris (Mattering Press).

The book explores hospitals through their material worlds: objects, substances, and infrastructures that shape care but often remain unnoticed.

In their essay, Street and Greene examine sterilisation as a key system that historically enabled the reuse of medical devices. They show how these labour-intensive practices structured hospital life, and how their transformation helped drive the shift toward disposable materials.

By focusing on sterilisers as socio-material infrastructures, the essay situates today’s reliance on single-use plastics within longer histories of care, labour, and circulation in hospitals.

Full citation

Street, A., & Greene, J. (2025). Sterilisers. In A. Harris (Ed.), The matter of hospitals: An alphabetical investigation. Mattering Press (7 November 2025). https://doi.org/10.26481/mup.2503