Canadians Say Dialysis Adds to Climate Change

Years ago I worked with a lady from South Africa who was trying to design a "green" dialysis facility. We found out that is much easier said than done. With single us kidney, plastic at every turn (dialyzers, acid jugs, syringes etc.) and ROs that dump thousands of gallons of grey water every month it became clear dialysis is just not that environmentally friendly. We did find ways to reduce our footprint by using grey water for irrigation and toilets, recycling as much packaging as possible and locating the clinic in area where geothermal sources could be used for some power generation but those all come at a fairly high cost in design and execution. I consider myself an environmentally conscience person, and try to think of ways to reduce waste, but a lot of them just won't bought into by the American market. 

This is like the prop 65 label that everything causes cancer in california.......

I know there is a lot of waste from dialysis, but as with anything that is medical, it seems there is a need for it to keep people from getting sick. Are there things that we could do to reduce the amount of waste and should we look at those, sure, but does that mean that we should elevate the environment over people, nope. There are other things we can do to be good stewards of this planet.

We are in the business of keeping people alive because they are people.

Eric