3 health care sustainability trends to follow in 2025

The results are in – data from the 2025 Environmental Excellence Awards applications reveals our partners' impressive results in 2024. From a record number of reporting hospitals (nearly 493) to an aggregate annual savings of more than $203 million on environmental programs (up by 15%), and avoiding 185,000 metric tons of GHG emissions through climate mitigation projects, this year's awards data, and our latest Sustainability benchmark report show the sector's incredible progress.

Reporting hospitals:

• Saved enough water to fill 129 Olympic-sized swimming pools
• Diverted waste equivalent to the weight of 1,416 Boeing 747 jets
• Avoided GHG emissions equivalent to 40,412 gas-powered vehicles

For 20 years, Practice Greenhealth has been the first and only organization publishing data on health care sustainability performance. Our annual Sustainability Benchmark Report is a comprehensive summary of the anonymized and aggregated data we collect through our Environmental Excellence Awards.

By comparing these reports from year to year, we find powerful examples of growth and change driven by the sector’s commitment to making the delivery of health care more sustainable.

There has been a 140% increase in partner hospitals planning for resilience in the face of a changing climate

Last year was the hottest year in recorded history, it’s undeniable that the climate crisis is also a health crisis. Deadly heat waves, catastrophic floods, and destructive wildfires are taking a devastating toll on lives and health. As extreme weather events become more frequent across the country, our partners are more committed than ever to strengthening resilience in their facilities, operations, and communities.

After suffering $1.4 billion in losses from Hurricane Sandy, Practice Greenhealth partner NYU Langone Health embarked on a multifaceted strategy to fortify their infrastructure, enhance their emergency preparedness, and adopt sustainable practices. These initiatives strengthened their capacity to withstand climate-related calamities, reduced environmental impact, and established a competitive benchmark for other health care organizations.

NYU Langone partnered with Summit Ridge Energy to be the sole recipient of the utility credits generated by two 4 MW Staten Island battery projects which began generating power in 2023. The projects reduce carbon emissions and grid demand during peak hours by using lower-carbon power to charge the batteries at night and then deploying that stored power during daytime peaks. This also helps avoid the use of older, carbon-heavy power generated at local peaker power plants to manage the daily demand fluctuations. NYU Langone pursued this agreement to demonstrate how large end-users such as hospitals can help decarbonize New York's energy grid and increase community resilience.

Building resilience starts with planning for continuous operations and proactively collaborating with the community to ensure that staff, vulnerable patients, and local infrastructure are equipped to withstand extreme events. In 2023, when we introduced a question on climate resilience plans in the Environmental Excellence Awards, 38% of applicants reported having developed one. In 2024, that number increased to an impressive 61%. Among those with climate resilience plans in 2024, 80% included strategies to strengthen resilience in communities that experience a disproportionately higher risk of harm from climate change.

Additionally, we’ve seen a 140% increase in partner hospitals that have established goals to create climate resilience plans from 2023 to 2024, highlighting that this crucial work is actively underway.

7 in 10 health care facilities are successfully reducing their climate impact

The number of executive leaders at partner hospitals recognizing climate change as a risk to their operations has grown from 14% in 2020 to 46% in 2024. CEOs and boards of directors are now requiring regular reporting on climate change mitigation and preparedness. Our partners are taking concrete steps to reduce their climate impact.

Providence, a complex health system serving five million patients in seven states, announced their goal to work toward becoming carbon-negative by 2030 on Earth Day in 2020. Since then, they developed the WE ACT scorecard, which tracks use, cost, and carbon emissions for many resources, and is generated monthly for each of their 51 hospitals. The scorecard provides an ongoing carbon emissions tracker and the ability to identify high and low performance to help hospitals with planning and prioritization. Providence set an annual goal to reduce emissions by 3% to 5% per year. By the end of 2022, Providence had reduced emissions by 11.5% and was saving $11 million annually through their sustainability initiatives.

“We know the progress made across the globe in the next decade will dictate the long-term health of our planet, which is why we are taking significant action now. We alone, however, cannot make enough meaningful progress. Large scale, systemic changes are urgently needed at the industry and individual level. We invite others to partner with us on our journey to become carbon negative, and share practices that will innovate and accelerate this important work. Together, we can navigate this challenging but vitally important path for the health and well-being of all.”
— Dr. Rod Hochman, president & CEO, Providence

In 2024, 351 award applicants set a specific GHG reduction goal, up from 23 in 2022. Additionally, 83% “other” goals reported for 2023 were specifically related to the reduction of Scope 3 GHG emissions. An impressive 28% of applicants directly purchased or generated renewable energy for their facilities with an aggregate 1,881,013 MMbtus of renewable energy – the equivalent energy needed to power over 17,000 average U.S. homes for a year.

The positive trends continue — through investing directly in renewable energy, taking advantage of regional renewable energy programs, and pursuing energy efficiency projects, the total kBTU per adjusted patient day we’ve observed has steadily decreased over the past few years. For all participants who have reported their total Scope 1 and 2 emissions for 2024 and a baseline year of their choosing, we’ve observed an 8.7% decrease overall in our partners’ emissions.

Nearly 50% of partner hospitals are working to reduce plastic use

Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, like more and more hospitals in our network, has been working to reduce single-use plastics.

Through their partnership with Stryker Sustainable Solutions, Wexner Medical Center reprocessed pulse oximeters, trocars, cables, and catheters, generating $1.4 million in savings from July 2023 to July 2024. Since 2018, they’ve diverted 60 tons of waste from landfills and saved $65,000 in disposal costs, significantly reducing plastic waste and supporting sustainability goals.

“Through strategic purchasing and active staff engagement, we’re transforming waste into a resource – lowering costs, reducing plastic waste in landfills, and advancing sustainability across our health care operations.”
— Aparna Dial, Senior Director, Facilities Services, Engineering & Sustainability at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center

Hospitals generate more than five million tons of waste annually, with a significant portion coming from single-use plastics. In the United States, 20% to 25% of the 14,000 tons of waste generated daily by hospitals is plastic. This reliance on plastic comes at a steep cost to public and environmental health.

The nurses in the pediatric ICU at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford, California, discovered there was considerable supply waste from carts in patient rooms that needed to be completely emptied and discarded following the discharge of an isolation patient. They studied the cart contents for approximately eight months and found that many of the supplies were rarely, if ever, used. They developed a revised supply cart inventory and piloted it for six months. Through a cross-functional workshop, the group also developed a procedure to safely disinfect or donate all of the leftover supplies from each cart. These changes have resulted in an anticipated $1.03 million in savings each year and a reduction in landfill waste of over 15,000 pounds, just from this one hospital unit. They are evaluating other areas of the facility where this change could be made.

Since 2017, there has been a steady increase in partners choosing reusable devices over single-use plastic device alternatives in their ORs. Similarly, the number of partners establishing single-use device reprocessing programs has consistently increased. While these programs are less impactful than utilizing reusables, they are still a meaningful way to reduce the amount of plastic waste generated by single-use devices.

Kaiser Permanente recognized this challenge as an opportunity to leverage their purchasing power as a large health care provider serving eight states and influence their suppliers to collaborate on a packaging redesign for disinfectant wipes to reduce waste and save money. The new packaging uses 80% less plastic, resulting in $2 million in cost savings while reducing waste and climate impacts.

We introduced new questions focused on plastic reduction work into the application for our 2025 awards cycle, and 47.6% of applicants reported their facility was working to reduce plastic use in operations. By harnessing the purchasing power, expertise, and influence of the health care sector, we aim to move the market toward environmentally safer products and technologies, fostering innovation through market transformation.

The power of Practice Greenhealth partner data

Practice Greenhealth is the innovation hub scaling the work of Health Care Without Harm, delivering environmental solutions to more than 1,700 hospitals and health systems in the United States and Canada. This work uniquely positions our organization to report on overarching sustainability trends in the health care industry.

Practice Greenhealth’s Environmental Excellence Awards program gathers sustainability data nationwide, celebrates leading health systems, and empowers health care facilities to continually improve their sustainability efforts.

Our data exemplifies how working to make health care delivery more sustainable has many benefits: for the patients and communities we serve, for the health of our organizations, and for the resilience of our sector in the face of a changing climate.