(Kevin Morris / Flickr Creative Commons)

Think back to the last time you were in a hospital. How much plastic did you see? Doctors and nurses use a lot of plastic syringes, which are only used once and come in a plastic sleeve that is thrown away, and that’s just one example.

Hospitals produce 14,000 tons of trash every day, and up to a quarter of that is plastic—the same plastics that release harmful chemicals into our bodies and our environment.

Dr. Hilary Ong is an assistant professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and she’s on a mission to reduce plastic in hospitals. She joins Idaho Matters along with Dr. Campen to talk more about this issue.