Unlike refusing a straw at a restaurant, it’s difficult to cut down on plastic while strapped unconscious to an operating table. Single-use plastic is facing more scrutiny than it ever has, and the medical industry could be the area where individual consumers have the least say.

Single-use plastic can be an attractive option for hospitals—cheap, durable, and easily tossed out—and each new fresh plastic container or covering offers a newly sterile environment. That’s why clinicians cover themselves and everything they use in plastic.

Yet for all the ways plastic has revolutionized the medical industry over the past century, it’s now being scrutinized for what happens after it’s done its job. Plastic can easily end up in marine environments, where it breaks