TY - JOUR T1 - National economic and environmental benefit of reusable textiles in cleanroom industry JF - PDA Journal of Pharmaceutical Science and Technology JO - PDA J Pharm Sci Technol DO - 10.5731/pdajpst.2020.012138 SP - pdajpst.2020.012138 AU - Michael Overcash AU - Evan Griffing Y1 - 2021/01/01 UR - http://journal.pda.org/content/early/2021/06/15/pdajpst.2020.012138.abstract N2 - In cleanroom facilities, both disposable and reusable textile garments (coveralls, boots, hoods, and frocks) meet the particulate standards from most rigorous to the most basic levels. However, the reusables clearly offer two other important benefits, lower annual cost and lower environmental impact. The objectives of this paper are to now provide quantitative reusable product benefits on a U.S. national environmental and economic basis. This is the first quantitative, novel multi-user economic evaluation of selecting cleanroom reusables over disposables. For personal protection equipment (PPE), these cost and environmental-benefits indicate there is also an improved environmental and economic aspect to the increased national demand for reusables related to Covid-19, while easily achieving necessary cleaning with approved detergents. The current reusable cleanroom market (14.1 million packages) was estimated to be 60% nonsterile and 40% sterilized. The total market is about 50% reusable and 50% disposable. This research documents there is an annual cost reduction of about 58% when selecting reusables over disposables giving an economic savings to the U.S. cleanroom sector from reusables of about $1.2 billion in the next decade. This is also saving the total U.S. about 136 million MJ natural resource energy/year (38 million kWh) and about 8.4 million kg CO2eq annually (removal of about 1,650 cars/yr). In a maximum hypothetical case for reusables at 87.5% of the market (12.5% are mandatory Hazmat disposable) would yield a U.S. national savings of nearly $2.1 billion/decade to the cleanroom sector bottom line, as well as 2.4 billion MJ nre savings in energy or removal of about 29,000 cars/decade. These results indicate there are effective, verifiable, and easily obtained environmental and economic benefits by the basic transition by diverse cleanrooms in deciding to select reusable garments. ER -