GLP-1s and biologics are driving unprecedented demand for drug delivery devices. What happens to all that plastic?
The numbers are staggering.
The global GLP-1 receptor agonist market is projected to grow from $53 billion in 2024 to over $156 billion by 2030, driven by accelerating demand for GLP 1 weight loss therapies and diabetes treatment and a rapidly expanding GLP 1 medication market. That’s a 17% compound annual growth rate. The biologics market, already valued at over $400 billion, is on pace to nearly double by 2031 as global biologics demand continues to rise and biopharmaceutical innovation scales worldwide.
And because most of these therapies require injection, the autoinjector market is expanding alongside them, expected to more than triple as autoinjector adoption increases across chronic therapies.
Driving Device Demand
Two trends are converging to accelerate autoinjector demand.
The first is the GLP-1 explosion. These drugs, originally developed for type 2 diabetes, have become the most effective non-surgical weight loss treatments available. While bariatric surgeries decreased 42% between 2019 and 2024, GLP-1 prescriptions among younger adults surged, contributing to a historic shift in U.S. drug spending driven by GLP 1 therapies. Medications targeting weight management accounted for nearly half of total drug spend growth in 2024, and nearly one-third of commercially insured households now report using GLP-1 therapies.
Waste Problem Hiding in Plain Sight
Medical plastics account for approximately 25% of waste generated by healthcare facilities. Yet research shows that most healthcare plastic waste is nonhazardous and recyclable.
The problem isn’t contamination, it’s classification. Hospital waste management systems often treat all medical plastics as hazardous, routing them to incineration regardless of actual contamination status.
Life cycle assessments reinforce the impact gap, showing that recycling medical plastics has significantly lower environmental impact than incineration. The difference between what’s possible and what’s practiced represents a major missed opportunity.
It’s an increasingly visible one as sustainability moves from corporate communications to procurement requirements.
The challenge is compounded by increasing home use. Unlike hospital-administered treatments that pass through facility waste streams, autoinjectors for GLP-1s and other self-administered biologics are used at home and typically end up in household trash. They never reach the medical waste infrastructure that might, in theory, sort and recycle them.
But even when recycling infrastructure exists, most autoinjectors present a fundamental barrier. A typical device contains polycarbonate housing, POM (acetal) sliding components, stainless steel springs, and elastomeric seals. Grind all of that together and you get an incompatible mixture that can't be processed into anything useful. The materials are individually recyclable but collectively worthless, all based on a design choice made years earlier that shuts down end-of-life options.
Sustainability Is No Longer Optional
Device manufacturers are increasingly focused on developing recyclable materials and addressing medical waste concerns.
Clinicians are emerging as influential drivers of sustainable product preferences. Their purchasing influence extends beyond clinical efficacy to environmental impact. Procurement teams are adding sustainability questions to RFQs, asking not just about price and performance but about end-of-life pathways and carbon footprint. And regulatory frameworks, particularly those in the EU, are beginning to incorporate environmental considerations into device approvals and extended producer responsibility requirements.
The healthcare sector is also facing broader scrutiny. Hospitals are setting carbon neutrality targets. Health systems are evaluating suppliers on ESG criteria. What was once a nice-to-have in marketing materials is becoming a line item in sourcing decisions. This is a present-day reality that affects material selection decisions being made today.
All-Polycarbonate Approach?
One solution gaining traction is designing devices entirely within a single compatible material family. Different grades can address different functional requirements such as thin-wall housings, high-stiffness internal components, and low-friction sliding surfaces while maintaining material compatibility for end-of-life processing. It's an engineering approach that solves the recyclability problem at the design stage rather than hoping for a waste-stream solution that doesn't exist.
In one study, when an all-polycarbonate prototype was ground and subjected to nine regrind cycles, the mixed material retained useful properties. Tensile strength matched standard commercial grades. Impact properties compared favorably to a 10% glass-filled commercial product. The regrind from the all-PC device became a feedstock with documented, predictable properties.
This material likely wouldn't return to drug-contact applications because regulatory considerations would preclude that. But outer housings, structural components, or applications outside healthcare are entirely feasible. The options unavailable to mixed-material designs are now feasible.
What This Means for Device Teams
For designers, the takeaway is that material selection has consequences beyond day-one performance. Every polymer family added to a device reduces end-of-life options. The question worth asking early in development: Does each component truly require a different material family, or can functional requirements be met within a compatible family?
The engineering task is now matching different property sets to different functional requirements. Formerra’s extensive polycarbonate line card demonstrates that this is a solvable challenge.
For more sustainable autoinjectors, all-polycarbonate designs don't solve every problem. But an all-PC approach transforms the end-of-life conversation from "this is waste" to "this is a material stream with documented properties and potential applications." That's a fundamentally different starting point, and one that opens doors instead of closing them.
Next Steps
The momentum toward more sustainable autoinjectors is already clear. The question is whether your device will be ready when sustainability shifts from differentiator to requirement.
Formerra partners with its suppliers to bring medical grade polycarbonate solutions, and the technical support behind them, to device teams navigating these tradeoffs. Application-specific testing, design consultation, and sustainability data including carbon footprint analysis are available. The conversation starts whenever you're ready to have it.
