The world’s plastic production is expected to double in the next 20 years, causing significant environmental and sustainability challenges. That is where the necessity to shift to a circular economy (CE) from a linear economy becomes evident. CE aims to solve the huge plastic waste challenges by introducing newer strategies of repairing, recycling, reusing, and designing products with a longer life cycle and less environmental impacts. While most of the existing approaches to quantifying circularity consider different economic and environmental factors, they often neglect the health aspects. This article emphasizes the need to incorporate health impacts into the concept of the circular economy, focusing on the plastic industry. It highlights the health effects on the workers during production and on consumers throughout the product’s life span, including recycling and reuse. The health risks associated with the occupational safety hazards, chemicals utilized in plastic production and recycling, and chemicals released from plastic containers (such as carcinogens, bisphenol A, and phthalates) during prolonged use were analyzed. It also examines the challenges of connecting health impacts to circularity and proposes methods to address worker and consumer health aspects in assessing circularity. Three case studies of plastic production and recycling industries are presented to recommend that despite significant recycling efforts, circularity scores of their products need to be lower due to the substantial health impacts experienced by the workers.

Background/Objectives: Catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs) are one of the most common healthcare-related morbidities. Also, severe clinical outcomes derived from CAUTIs demand an urgent need for the development of novel antimicrobial catheter materials. Since CAUTIs are primarily driven by a wide range of microorganisms causing biofilm formation on the surfaces of catheters, evaluating the effectiveness of innovative antimicrobial materials against a broad spectrum of known uropathogens is warranted. We aim (1) to demonstrate the ability of incorporated organo-selenium versus that of an FDA-cleared antimicrobial catheter and (2) to show that the results of the study are consistent against the most common microorganisms causing urinary tract infections in humans. Methods: Based on encouraging preliminary studies, three percent of organo-selenium (weight-based), as a novel antimicrobial catheter material, was incorporated into thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU). This was compared in vitro with plain polyurethane catheters and the SILQ ClearTract catheter with a zwitterionic coating (FDA-cleared for its antimicrobial properties in December 2022). The antimicrobial activity was studied against Candida albicans, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Proteus mirabilis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, MRSA, and Staphylococcus epidermidis by assessment of colony-forming unit counts along with visual confirmation using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). Results: Plain polyurethane catheters (control group) showed 7- to 8-log of in vitro growth for all tested microbes, whereas the antimicrobial zwitterionic SILQ ClearTract catheters still showed 6- to 7-log of microbial growth. In contrast, organo-selenium-incorporated catheters demonstrated no detectable in vitro growth for all tested microbes (C. albicans, E. coli, K. pneumoniae, P. mirabilis, P. aeruginosa, S. aureus, MRSA, and S. epidermidis). SEM analysis also validated the findings. Conclusions: Potentially non-leaching organo-selenium, as a novel urinary catheter material, significantly inhibited microbial attachment, growth, and biofilm formation across a wide spectrum of common uropathogenic organisms compared to a zwitterionic catheter, providing a strong foundation for further detailed in vivo and clinical studies.