Packaging design in the healthcare field: eco-guidelines for sustainable packaging and disposables in dialysis treatments

The recent economic crisis has emphasized the costs for diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Resource consumption and waste production are huge environmental problems, but they also represent a significant cost for National Healthcare Services. The analysis of scientific literature showed a great potential in the field of environmental sustainability that is currently addressing political and educational research. Design could improve environmental and economical sustainability of medical treatments, creating new products and systems able to optimize resource consumption and reduce waste. The collaboration between designers and nephrologists brings together interdisciplinary skills to jointly face the research problem, focusing on chronic haemodialysis. This treatment exerts a high environmental impact, because of the need of a huge quantity of disposables, resulting in a great amount of waste for each treatment. All disposables and packaging used in different dialysis treatment methods were classified and analysed to define the main issues and potentials. A specific qualitative-quantitative methodology was implemented, starting from the disassembly of product components. Functional and environmental problems were identified for each category and specific guidelines outlined. These provided practical design indications, not only concerning sustainability requirements, but also functionality and communication. The application of guidelines could make it possible to improve the environmental and economical sustainability of packaging and disposables for haemodialysis treatments.