Green hospital - medicine with a zero-carbon footprint?

The European Union is currently reassessing inhalation anaesthetics for their potential detrimental effects on the environment. Other drugs used in modern anaesthesiology are also subject to a similar assessment. Being almost the last cross-sectional specialty in a highly specialized small-scale medicine, anaesthesiology is becoming increasingly aware of its responsibility towards patients and the environment. However, there is a lack of well thought-out strategies in the balancing act between individual risk -benefit considerations for the respective patients and ecology. A discussion of inhalation anaesthesia versus TIVA is certainly the wrong approach to finding a solution to the problem. Ecological issues just cannot and must not be limi-ted to the reduction of gas anaesthesia. German hospitals are generating tons of waste similar to household waste, but also infectious waste. Hospitals are in general already considered to be the fifth largest waste producer in Germany. Theoretically, up to 90 % of all plastic materials, packaging and glass waste could be recycled. This could be a star-ting point that can be realized immediately and with ease, also as much as the collection and reprocessing of volatile anaesthetics is concerned.