‘Green Dividend’ report highlights examples of greener healthcare options leading to substantial savings in hospitals across the country
Sustainable healthcare can cut costs while reducing clinical waste, a new report has claimed.
Launching The Green Dividend: Why Sustainability is Ireland’s Health and Enterprise Opportunity, the authors argue that sustainability isn’t an additional cost or a clinical compromise.
Published by Health Innovation Hub Ireland (HIHI), the report features a number of examples where greener options have saved thousands of euros while cutting waste and reducing carbon emissions.
They include a three-year device re-manufacturing programme at Bon Secours Hospital in Cork, involving 150 devices, which generated €48,015 in savings and cut carbon emissions by 261kg.
In the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital in Dublin, a closed cabin device pre-cleaning system cut cleaning non-conformances by 50 per cent and saved 160 staff hours a year.
The new process generated total annual savings of roughly €32,000, with the equipment’s capital cost offset within two years. Energy use fell by 82 per cent, with 1,200 litres of water saved per day.
Meanwhile, in University Hospital Galway, a HIHI pilot found that a refillable ultrasound gel system replacing single-use sachets cut gel volume per scan by 95 per cent and eliminated plastic sachets entirely. Patients reported no reduction in comfort, and the change required no retraining or workflow disruption.
HIHI’s GreenTech in Health programme tests sustainable products directly in Irish hospitals and clinics generating verified, site-specific evidence that environmental performance and patient care are not in tension.
“Sustainable healthcare, in Ireland and globally, has too often been framed as a cost, a compliance obligation or a long-term ambition deferred to future budgets and future governments,” said Eimear Galvin, national HIHI Greentech in Health lead.
“This must change. The innovations exist, the clinical appetite is there, what we now need is procurement reform to match it.”
Globally, the health sector is responsible for an estimated five per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions, with 70 per cent of that footprint arising from the production, packaging and disposal of the products hospitals use every day.
Irish evidence of the impact sustainable healthcare solutions sits alongside a wider international safety record: a 2008 US audit and subsequent peer-reviewed analyses found remanufactured devices carry no increased risk across external fixation devices, laparoscopic instruments, and Class I, IIa and IIb devices.
In the UK, a comparable programme at Stockport NHS Foundation Trust reused 81 electrophysiology catheters, saving 70 kg of CO₂ emissions with no adverse patient outcomes reported.
HIHI’s GreenTech in Health programme tests sustainable products directly in Irish hospitals and clinics generating verified, site specific evidence that environmental performance and patient care are not in tension.
“The environmental footprint of Ireland’s health system, including its energy use, reliance on single use products and waste, is a clinical, financial and strategic challenge that demands action,” said HIHI national director Dr Tanya Mulcahy.
“It is also a genuine opportunity. Through our GreenTech in Health programme, HIHI provides the national testbed infrastructure to turn sustainable innovation into procurement ready, export-competitive solutions.”
