To improve the carbon footprint of hospitals we need to know what causes it

I’ve spent enough time around hospitals that I’ve thought about what the carbon footprint is. It can’t be positive. And there have to be possible improvements. At the same time, it’s easy to think “it’s a hospital, the services are too vital to care about the impact.” I definitely understand this perspective and to some degree it makes sense. I’m willing to make sacrifices elsewhere before my health care is impacted. But, there are gains to be made without sacrificing the quality of care.

Cimprich and Young (2023) studied a hospital in British Columbia, Canada to find what the major contributors are. Medical waste is often targeted but there are other areas that are bigger contributors. Energy use is high in hospitals. Finding ways to green the energy supply could help a lot with reducing impacts. Water use and wastewater release are also large contributors. I wonder about this one, if hospitals switch to more reusable equipment to reduce waste it could increase the amount of water and wastewater. Anaesthetic gases, which I’ve written about before, are potent greenhouse gasses.

The most interesting finding however, was that the impacts of manufacturing the products used in the hospital was one of the most significant contributions. This includes materials, pharmaceuticals, and other chemicals. This means that a significant contribution to the carbon footprint of hospitals happens before the products ever get to a hospital.

This is an important part of life cycle analysis. It isn’t just about the costs during use. It includes manufacturing and disposal. Therefore, there are big gains to make in manufacturing products for hospitals to decrease the impacts.

This might seem small in the grand scheme of things, but healthcare accounts for 5-10% of the national totals in developed countries. So reducing impacts and emissions would significantly contribute to overall emissions.