Colloquia

Summary

In the context of climates change, hospitals who use significant amounts of disposable products are taking initiatives to become more sustainable. This challenging task can be supported by Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). The paper studies wrist fracture management for which a 3D printed personalized splint, conventional mineral and plastic plaster casts are options. All these splints are for one-time-only-use as they are fit to the forearm of the patient. 3D printed splints have benefits for patients as being more comfortable, lightweight and breathable. However, it is unknown if this new technology adds to the environmental impact. Thus, the goal is to perform an LCA of all three alternatives to highlight environmental impact and hotspots for further improvement. The functional unit was set as ‘Immobilize the wrist of 100 patients with a distal radius fracture’, and all products to perform plaster treatment were included (sling, plastic gloves, cover, padding). GaBi software (Sphera, www.sphera.com) was used to create models that included the steps of raw material acquisition, production, packaging, transport, use and disposal, and were fed with input from treatment observations, (medical) regulations and interviews with medical professionals. Primary assumptions were made: production is primarily in Europe, all disposables assumed to be incinerated, except for cardboard; and  transport was by truck and container ship and simplified to take place between the main steps. In the case materials were not present in the GaBi database, similar materials were selected and tested for sensitivity. Subsequently, analysis of 18 environmental impact aspects were obtained with the ReCiPe 2016 tool. To summarize the results in a single value, weighing factors were assigned to each aspect. The 3D printed splint scored 30.6 points, the mineral splint 34.5 points and the plastic splint 38.6 points, showing that the 3D printed splint having the lowest environmental impact. For all alternatives, the production phase had the highest negative impact (>92% of total points) including production of cotton, polyester, polyacrylonitrile, polyurethane-based 3D print resin and low density polyethylene. The results indicate that the implementation of 3D printed splint technology can be continued and perhaps accelerated from an environmental impact point of view. Still, there is room for reducing the overall impact  by exploring alternative resins that are produced more environmentally and preferably are biodegradable or recyclable, because of the one-time-only-use of the splints.