Why we need to prioritise sustainability in female health products

Abingdon Health is proud to work in partnership with a number of female-led entrepreneurs. Here, Jo Barnard, founder of the certified B-Corp industrial design agency Morrama, discusses with us why companies should prioritise sustainability in the design of female health products.

When it comes to healthcare, considering sustainability can often drop down the list of priorities. With strict regulations and testing requirements, simply developing a product that works and gets approved for launch may be enough for most companies in the industry.

However, we are no longer in a situation where the planet can wait. Exacerbated by the pandemic, medical waste is threatening human and environmental health. So what can be done?

Designing for appropriate lifespan

We need to start at the end.

In the case of single or short-term use products such as rapid diagnostics tests, what happens at disposal is key. Where products that could be passed on or reused are concerned, then it’s important to consider safe re-use or refurbishment as an option.

By mapping out the full product lifecycle from beginning to end, we can design for more sustainable options without compromising on the user experience.

The real cost of materials

If you are designing a product to be used once, such as a pregnancy test, then cheap(est) materials may seem like the way to go, but using materials that will last hundreds of years no longer makes sense.

Our reliance on plastic, particularly within the healthcare market, is going to take some work to overcome, but we have to try.

The first step we can take is switching to biodegradable materials where we can. Particularly in healthcare and diagnostics where recycling isn’t an option, ensuring that the product will break down naturally is key to reducing waste. Materials such as PHA, starch-based biopolymers and new paper technologies all provide some exciting options.

FLUUS’s flushable sanitary pads are a great example. Period products are a huge contributor to single use plastic waste, so it’s amazing to see some real innovation in this space.

London-based Fluus uses plant fibres and natural adhesives to make biodegradable, flushable pads

Rethinking ownership

With longer-term use products, the question is, how long are they actually used for?

When it comes to getting pregnant for example, a tech-based product solution such as the Mira hormone and ovulation tracker may only be used for three months.

However, a woman is going to wait at least three more months before she considers getting rid of the device or may keep hold of it a few years for next time. In that time however, many other women could have benefited from the product.

It’s commonplace in the health service for patients to be given a device to use for a period of time and then be expected to return it. (Although, a large percentage of devices will be ‘written off’ once issued based on the likelihood of actual return, so there is still work to do there.)

When it comes to consumer products, however, we tend to prefer ownership over lease models.

That being said, with cost of living increasing, the pressure is on for brands to be creative over getting customers on-board and this is a great opportunity to explore subscription-model usage of certain products – where the user ‘owns’ the product for the time it is needed and then it is returned to the pool for the next user to draw from – and also incentives for re-using/recycling/re-selling equipment to prolong their useful lifecycle.

User behaviour

In all cases, we need to consider human behaviour. Once you have put a product into the hands of the user, you no longer have 100 per cent control as to what happens to it. We have to think about what people are likely to do and how we can nudge them to do the right thing.

With regards to brands creating disposable eco-options for diagnostics, such as pregnancy test brand Hoopsy, there needs to be consideration for how to instil the same faith in a paper strip as a hopeful mother has in the all-singing, all-dancing electronic alternative.

Where recycling is an option, how can you be sure that the product will actually end up in the recycling bin?

Design and material choice alone isn’t enough. When it comes to creating sustainable solutions that work, there is as much work to do in brand, positioning and education. 

All sides need to work together if we are to accelerate the move to more sustainable healthcare solutions. Individuals have a big part to play, not just as end-users, but as key players in organisations bringing new products to market in a design, development, manufacturing, sales or marketing capacity.

We have to acknowledge the environmental costs of doing the same things we always have and push for change. That change could look like a roadmap for incremental improvements or chasing innovative solutions to the bigger challenges; either way, we have to accelerate our efforts to ensuring the planet becomes a stakeholder in our product development.

Morrama is proud to partner with Abingdon Health to support its CDMO customers in the design of innovative lateral flow products and sustainable packaging.

We are also extremely supportive of the work Abingdon does to support women in STEM, with a workforce that’s over 54 per cent women and over 56 per cent of its leadership positions held by females.

Jo Barnard is founder and creative director of industrial design and innovation consultancy Morrama.