According to new research published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, biodegradable medical gowns that are supposed to be greener than conventional versions are instead producing dangerous greenhouse gases. The use of disposable medical gowns – both conventional and biodegradable – has skyrocketed since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Since the biodegradable version breaks down faster than regular wraps, popular wisdom has it that it offers a greener option due to less space usage and chronic landfill emissions.
That wisdom can be wrong. “There is no magic bullet for this problem,” said Fengqi You, a professor of power systems engineering at Cornell University. “Plastic conventional medical gowns take many years to decompose, and biodegradable gowns break down much faster but produce gas emissions faster, such as added methane and carbon dioxide, than conventional gowns in a landfill,” said You, a senior faculty member at Cornell Atkinson. Center for Sustainability, adding, “Maybe conventional dress isn’t so bad.”
According to research led by Cornell Ph.D. student Xiang Zhao, the production of biodegradable coats represents an additional 11% higher rate of ecotoxicity than conventional alternatives. Adopting landfill gas capture and utilization processes at biodegradable liner landfills can reduce GHG emissions by 9.79%, landfill life-cycle usage by nearly 49% and save at least 10% of fossil resources by using on-site cogeneration of electricity, researchers find .
Conventional liners are environmentally and socially sustainable as they can be 14% less toxic to humans, cause 10% less greenhouse gas emissions and are almost 10% less toxic to fresh water compared to landfill biodegradable liners with excess gas emissions . Improving the gas capture efficiency above 85% can make biodegradable casings more environmentally sustainable than conventional casings.
“It’s nice to break down plastic into smaller things,” Zhao said. “But these little things eventually break down into gas, and if we don’t capture them, they become greenhouse gases that get into the air.”Funding for this research was provided by the Cornell Center for Materials Research (CCMR) with funding from NSF and New York State Empire State Development’s Division of Science, Technology and Innovation.
