Beyond Waste Prevention: Sustainable Materials Management for Healthcare
Healthcare waste prevention is a key sustainability goal: send fewer things to the garbage via reduce / reuse / recycle. Sustainable materials principles are more sophisticated than simply avoiding waste. Here are three goals that healthcare organizations should add to their sustainability strategy.
Decarbonize the supply chain: The U.S. health care system is the seventh largest carbon dioxide producer in the world. The National Health Service (NHS) greenhouse gas inventory shows that 60% of the health system’s greenhouse gases are related to purchasing. Track the carbon footprint of your supply chain via Scope 3 emissions, and set a reduction goal.
Eliminate single-use plastics: Single use plastics are carbon intensive, contain dangerous chemicals, and take hundreds of years to break down in the environment. As we see the negative impacts of plastics in nature and public health, single-use plastic bans are being enacted globally. Single use plastics are a major component of the health care supply chain, and it is time for new solutions. The industry needs meaningful metrics around plastics use and reduction goals. At the organizational level, target single-use plastics for elimination from the supply stream, measure impacts, and share outcomes.
Decrease resource intensity: The sheer volume of resources used in the healthcare setting drive the environmental impact and the high cost of care. Waste diversion initiatives such as recycling are important, but ultimately the industry must achieve more while wasting fewer resources. At the organizational level, total waste is a useful reflection of resource intensity, and should be normalized by a productivity measure such as Adjusted Patient Days. Additionally, more research is needed to evaluate resources used, and wasted, per operational task, and by department. As this data emerges, the industry will be able to set better targets.
