Environmentally sustainable perioperative medicine: simple strategies for anesthetic practice

Purpose This continuing professional development module aims to inform anesthesiologists about the magnitude of healthcare-related waste and its contribution to global warming, as well as providing general strategies to improve environmental sustainability in daily anesthesia practice in a Canadian context. Principal considerations Global warming is considered to be the biggest global health threat of the 21 st century. Healthcare is not only adversely impacted by but also a significant contributor to global warming and environmental degradation. Healthcare provision produces 4.6% of the total national greenhouse gas emissions in Canada, while healthcare waste has increased unabated in recent years, largely because of increased use of disposable medical supplies. Operating rooms are highly energy-intensive and produce up to 33% of total hospital waste. Increasingly, attention in healthcare is being focused on environmental sustainability by exploring evidence-based approaches to more sustainable delivery of healthcare. Key to environmental sustainability research is the life-cycle assessment methodology, which measures the cradle-to-grave impact of products on various environmental outcomes and empowers purchasing departments to make environmentally conscious decisions. By using the “reduce, reuse, recycle” hierarchy of waste reduction, several easily implementable evidence-based strategies are proposed to reduce the environmental footprint of everyday anesthesia practice. These recommendations focus on informed decisions on volatile anesthetic use, reduced drug waste, limited use of single-use devices, and meticulous waste segregation and recycling strategies. Conclusions Anesthesiologists have a unique opportunity to be champions of environmental sustainability through evidence-based practices, while simultaneously reaping significant synergistic health, cost, and quality co-benefits.