Much of the growing global concern about the plastics polluting our oceans and clogging our landfills has focused on reducing consumption and reusing where we can. But there’s a reason manufacturers and consumers struggle to substitute other materials— for many uses, plastics are simply the best material available. When it comes to keeping our food and drugs clean and uncontaminated and our medical procedures reliably sterile and safe, the one-use-only disposability of plastics has been essential to our health.