Feature: The challenges of decarbonising the healthcare supply chain

Maha El Akoum, Head of Content and Research Fellow at the World Innovation Summit for Health explains how the healthcare industry can decarbonise its supply chains. 

Perhaps the greatest paradox in healthcare is the sector’s contribution to the climate change crisis.

The healthcare sector’s climate footprint is equivalent to an astounding 4.4% of global net emissions. To put this into perspective, if the sector was a country, it would be the fifth-largest emitter on the planet, and responsible for a much larger share than aviation and shipping, despite their reputation.

It is for this very reason that there is a growing global movement toward addressing this glaring contradiction. Increasingly, the medical community is taking a stance on the perils that climate change currently poses to human health, and the potential threats to come.

There are numerous ways in which we, the healthcare sector, can tackle this problem. The first and perhaps most crucial of which is the mere acknowledgment of the issue at stake, its magnitude, its consequences, and the awareness that it is largely solvable. Once this is covered, we can then delve into the different sources of healthcare’s climate footprint and tackle the ones we deem within our control.

Given the scale and intricacy of the healthcare sector, this may seem like a daunting task. However, the good news is that it is largely achievable, and hospitals and health systems around the world have started doing their part to achieve the universally endorsed mitigation targets.

The process of ‘greening’ can occur at different levels. It can happen at a systems-level where investment in research can help strengthen the evidence base on and predict future trajectories and trends in the relationship between healthcare and climate change. This can then inform policies through the development of climate-smart action plans for the healthcare sector.

Greening can also occur at an individual level, where healthcare professionals and managing staff can themselves reflect on their personal environmental footprint and take the necessary actions to reduce it. They could strive to use their resources more efficiently, or use their voices to advocate for more sustainable product choices. The move toward procuring more sustainable products is especially important in the context of the healthcare system, given that the supply chain is responsible for the lion’s share (71%) of the sector’s footprint.

This means that the majority of emissions originate from the production, packaging, transportation, and disposal of the different goods and services that the healthcare sector purchases and uses. These could be pharmaceuticals, hospital equipment, and medical devices, among others. What this also means, is that greening the supply chain is of paramount importance.

In most healthcare institutions, it is the supply chain and procurement teams that typically make the majority of purchasing decisions on behalf of the different departments.

Therefore, healthcare professionals, hospital workers, and managing staff should all work closely with these teams to ensure that they emphasize the importance of the efficacy of the products that are being purchased. Healthcare products must always be safe, and they must always be of high quality, but additional factors, such as a product’s ingredients, materials, water, or energy usage and/or packaging are also increasingly becoming influencing factors of great concern.

In order to move forward, it is imperative that these preferences are formalized in a way that means questions or criteria that are related to the green attributes of products are included in future requests for proposals. Once more and more healthcare institutions emphasize the significance of greener materials, their colossal purchasing power will undoubtedly drive manufacturers to develop products that are increasingly innovative, and that meet the criteria for sustainability alongside safety and quality.

The WISH report on Health in the Climate Crisis recommends that the healthcare sector uses its buying power to influence suppliers to report their carbon footprint, and their commitment to reducing emissions. This could then translate into Environmentally Preferable Purchasing (EPP) programmes, and selecting to reward climate-smart suppliers within the tender process.

Healthcare institutions that have implemented these EPP programmes and reimagined and reconstructed their institutional approach towards green purchasing have already reported various benefits such as reduced costs, an increase in overall efficiency and, most importantly, improved patient care outcomes.

Through decarbonizing the healthcare supply chain as part of the general trajectory to zero emissions, hospitals and healthcare systems will not only become more efficient, but will also set a standard for the entire sector, as well as other industries and broader society. This can be achieved through research, effective leadership, organizational commitment, and the reformulation of current policies and strategies.