How reducing greenhouse gas emissions can contribute to health system’s bottom line.
By Jenna Hughes
Editor’s note: The following is the final part of a three-part series on sustainability.
The fossil fuels that power hospitals are a contributor to the respiratory and cardiovascular conditions we’re treating inside them, said Gwyneth Jones, Senior Director at Practice Greenhealth. “Switching to clean energy is one of the most direct ways to actually close that loop.”
Indeed, the health impacts of fossil fuel combustion by-products include impairment of cognitive and behavioral development, respiratory illness and other chronic diseases, per the National Library of Medicine.
“Investment in renewable electricity and cleaner energy in general is an investment in the health of our patients, communities and future generations,” said Christian Hutter, Associate Director, Sustainability and Packaging at B. Braun Medical Inc.
By prioritizing the switch to renewable energy, the health sector can achieve improved patient outcomes while fostering healthier and more resilient communities – and the first step to this journey lies within procurement and production.
“We must continue to find ways to provide cheaper energy and cleaner energy, for the people who need the most help,” said Jones. “Because around 71% of health care’s total climate footprint worldwide (closer to 80% in the U.S.) comes from upstream sources – the production and transport of the goods we use every single day – procurement decisions are clinical decisions.”
“As we approach 2030, we will likely see further investment in renewable energy but, also a higher focus on reducing energy costs simultaneously,” said Hutter. “Product and packaging design will further evolve to enable recycling just as we’ve seen in the consumer products space and there’s likely to be unique collection streams for materials less prevalent in the consumer space.”
Several hospitals and health systems are already embedding sustainability principles – emissions and materials reduction, circular design, efficiency, local manufacturing – in standard contract language. Jones asserts that suppliers tend to change their practices when the customers writing contracts start requiring it.
“When large health care systems require suppliers to eliminate PFAS chemicals and design for reuse, the vendors who want to keep those contracts move. Health systems have more leverage over their supply chains than most of them realize,” said Jones. “The ones using it are starting to see what’s possible.”
Leading in green innovation
A critical step in reducing the health sector’s greenhouse gas impact is the tracking and public reporting of environmental and emissions data related specifically to health care delivery.
“Health care is roughly 10% of the global economy. When health systems move toward renewables in numbers, it changes what gets built and what gets funded,” said Jones. “The money healthcare spends shapes what energy gets built. When enough health systems shift to renewables, it accelerates the transition for everyone.”
Many healthcare organizations are already pioneering in renewable energy – for example, Gundersen Health System was the first in the U.S. to reach full energy independence with wind turbines and a biomass boiler generating more than they consume. Boston Medical Center has gone in a different direction, building a solar array and passing the credits directly to low-income patients as a reduction on their utility bills.
Several health systems have also been estimating and tracking their emissions privately, driven by organizational sustainability and cost-savings goals.
The University of Vermont Health has implemented consistent and effective staff training to address the primary need for UVMH to successfully transition to reusable BP cuffs. Rush University Medical Center (RUMC) has introduced a collaborative approach for reducing plastics in the OR.
Additionally, OSF Healthcare SAMC has created a multi-stakeholder group to bring key decision-makers together and collectively optimize reprocessing efforts, and the hospital has now achieved single-use device reprocessing success.
“Investing in cleaner, renewable energy, reducing waste, reducing virgin plastic consumption, increasing renewable material use and designing for recyclability all represent areas of opportunity for the healthcare sector to lead,” said Hutter. “Further, understanding, capturing and sharing impact data with partners enables better, data-driven, decisions across the entire supply chain.”
Key Takeaways
Investing in renewable electricity:
- Represents an area of opportunity for the healthcare sector to lead.
- Entails integrating sustainability principles such as emissions, materials, circular design, efficiency, local manufacturing into standard contract language.
- Encourages data-driven, environmentally focused decision-making across the entire supply chain.