Hospitals exist to make people healthier, but running them can make communities sicker. A deep thirst for water and energy, an unending production of medical waste, and a reliance on carbon-heavy supply chains mean that healthcare facilities often add to the environmental ills that diminish the quality of life.
For years, hospital administrators could be philosophical about this reality. That’s no longer true. Regulators are beginning to require emissions reporting. Accreditation bodies now evaluate environmental performance. And sustainable practices are boosting the bottom line at hospitals that adopt them. What’s more, hospitals that postpone sustainability face rising expenses and growing compliance burdens. The hospitals leading this transition are pursuing 12 strategies that lessen environmental harm and protect—or improve—their bottom line.
What Is Sustainability in Hospitals?
Sustainability in hospitals is the practice of delivering quality patient care while reducing environmental harm and managing resources in ways that support long-term financial health. The World Health Organization frames it as care that improves or restores health while minimizing damage to the environment.
In practical terms, sustainable healthcare means rethinking how hospitals are built, powered, supplied, and run. That definition has urgency: The Joint Commission, which is the organization that accredits most US hospitals, added a Global Health Impact chapter to its 2024 standards, making sustainability part of how hospitals are formally evaluated.
Key Takeaways
- Hospital sustainability limits harm to the environment, improves patient outcomes, minimizes staff burnout, cuts operating costs, and strengthens regulatory positioning.
- Sustainability regulations are already in effect in California, Massachusetts, and New York, and are pending in several other states.
- Strategies driving results include energy efficiency, renewable power, sustainable procurement, device reprocessing, telehealth, and biophilic design.
- ERP software provides the operational foundation for sustainability by furnishing supply chain visibility, demand forecasting, supplier scoring, and compliance tracking.
- AI capabilities and predictive analytics help strengthen demand forecasting and automate decision-making.
Sustainability in Hospitals Explained
Three forces have made hospital sustainability a strategic priority:
- Clinical: Decades of research—synthesized in a 2024 systematic review—link hospital environments to patient outcomes. Design choices, such as incorporating plants and other natural elements, influence recovery times and alleviate patient anxiety. Indoor air quality affects respiratory health.
- Financial: Margins in healthcare are thin, and energy, water, and supply costs keep rising. Hospitals that have invested in efficiency and waste reduction are slashing costs. Providence Health System, for example, saved $46 million in 2025 through its sustainability programs.
- Regulatory: In Massachusetts, acute hospitals participating in MassHealth funds must now report Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions annually. New York City began penalizing buildings that exceed emissions limits in 2025. And as of this year, California requires large for-profit companies, including investor-owned health systems, to report emissions. At the federal level, hospitals must contend with the aforementioned Joint Commission’s 2024 accreditation standards.
Most frameworks organize hospital sustainability around four pillars: environmental (reducing ecological footprint), economic (maintaining financial viability), social (supporting workforce welfare and community health), and clinical (delivering care without unnecessary resource use). These pillars reinforce each other. A hospital that cuts energy waste lowers costs and emissions, and improves the environment for patients and staff.
How Do Hospitals Affect the Environment?
Hospitals rank among the most resource-intensive buildings. They operate 24/7, house complex mechanical and clinical systems, and generate waste streams that few other industries match. Four categories account for most of the environmental impact:
- Medical waste: Hospitals produce four distinct types of hazardous medical waste—chemical (expired or unused drugs, chemotherapy agents, laboratory chemicals), biological (blood, cultures, pathological tissue), radioactive (materials used in cancer treatment and nuclear medicine), and sharps (needles, syringes, lancets). The numbers add up quickly: The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that although hazardous waste represents only 15% of total waste, in high-income countries that still totals 1.1 pounds of hazardous medical waste per hospital bed per day.
- Energy and utilities: Around the clock, HVAC systems maintain strict temperature and air quality standards for operating rooms, isolation units, and patient floors. Sterilization equipment, imaging machines, data centers, laundries, and kitchens all operate simultaneously. This creates energy demands that far exceed those of typical commercial buildings.
- Carbon emissions: The WHO estimates that healthcare accounts for roughly 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Hospitals contribute both directly and indirectly. Direct emissions come from facility operations, such as boilers, backup generators, anesthetic gases, and refrigerants; indirect emissions come from purchased electricity and, most significantly, the supply chain. The manufacturing, transport, and disposal of pharmaceuticals, medical devices, food, and supplies account for the majority of healthcare’s carbon footprint.
- Water: Hospitals consume significant volumes of water for HVAC and cooling systems, sterilization, laundry, kitchen operations, and patient care. According to Grumman|Butkus Associates’ “2023 Hospital Energy and Water Benchmarking Survey”—the most comprehensive nongovernmental source, tracking 181 hospitals—average water usage was 42 to 51 gallons per square foot per year. Many facilities operate cooling towers that require continuous water cycling.
Benefits of Sustainable Hospital Practices
In addition to helping the environment, hospitals that invest in greener operations see returns across four categories: better outcomes for patients and staff, public health gains in the communities they serve, measurable financial savings, and stronger positioning for an evolving regulatory landscape.
People Benefits
Sustainable practices create healthier environments for patients and staff alike. Avoiding the use of toxic cleaning chemicals and materials improves indoor air quality—better for vulnerable patients and for staff who spend long shifts in the building. Design elements, such as natural light, improved ventilation, and views of greenery, support faster patient recovery and help stem staff fatigue. For hospitals facing persistent workforce shortages, demonstrating a commitment to employee health and well-being can also be seen as a retention and recruitment advantage.
Public Health Benefits
There’s an uncomfortable irony that hospitals contribute to the pollution that makes people sick. For example, incinerating medical waste releases dioxins and mercury, and diesel generators and delivery trucks add particulates to the air. Curbing emissions and waste means cleaner air and water for surrounding communities, particularly those already bearing disproportionate environmental health burdens.
Financial Benefits
Most sustainability initiatives pay for themselves. Energy efficiency, waste reduction, water conservation, and device reprocessing all lower operating costs. Federal tax credits now make solar and efficiency upgrades more feasible, with utility savings that compound year over year. And sustainability initiatives can dramatically improve inventory management by reducing overordering and spoilage, generating meaningful savings for a sector with tight margins.
Regulatory Benefits
Accreditation bodies and federal agencies are starting to incorporate sustainability into their frameworks. Hospitals that act now can stay ahead of requirements that may soon become mandatory. In doing so, they also signal to patients, staff, and communities that they take environmental responsibility seriously.
12 Ways to Make Hospitals More Sustainable
Sustainability in hospitals represents a series of operational choices. The institutions setting the pace in sustainability follow 12 best practices that touch facilities, supply chain, clinical practice, and technology.
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Energy-efficient Lighting and HVAC
Heating, cooling, ventilation, and lighting account for most of a hospital’s energy use. A switch to LED lighting leads to significantly less energy usage than sticking with fluorescent systems. LED lighting also generates less heat, which eases the load on cooling systems. For HVAC, demand-controlled ventilation and high-efficiency chillers can cut energy use without compromising the air quality standards that are so critical for infection control and stemming the risk of spoilage. AI-powered building automation systems go further, learning occupancy patterns, predicting demand on the basis of patient head count and surgical schedules, and continuously optimizing temperature and ventilation.
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Sustainable Hospital Construction
New construction and major renovations offer the chance to embed sustainability from the start. The LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating system provides a framework for designing facilities that consume less water and energy and fewer natural resources while achieving better indoor environmental quality. The US Green Building Council released LEED v5 in April 2025, which enhances emphasis on decarbonization and embodied carbon in materials—the emissions associated with the manufacture of building materials and transporting them to a site.
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Recycling and Composting Programs
Hospitals generate huge volumes of recyclable and compostable materials, including paper, cardboard, plastics, metals, blue surgical wrap, and food waste. Effective recycling and composting programs require clear sorting protocols, staff training, and partnerships with waste haulers that can handle healthcare-specific streams. Composting food waste is particularly impactful, because organic material in landfills generates methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than CO2.
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Solar Panels and Renewable Power Initiatives
Hospitals are shifting more readily to solar power as photovoltaic costs have fallen and federal incentives have expanded. The Inflation Reduction Act’s direct pay provisions now make solar projects more appealing to nonprofit hospitals because they allow hospitals to receive clean energy tax credits as cash refunds—an option that wasn’t previously available. In addition to solar panels, health systems are pursuing agreements to purchase wind and other renewable energy. Such agreements lock in energy costs and reduce grid dependence.
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Environmentally Friendly Supplies and Chemicals
Hospitals use a lot of cleaning and disinfection chemicals, many of which pose risks to staff and the environment. Switching to certified green-chemistry products minimizes occupational exposure, lowers the toxicity of wastewater, and can improve indoor air quality. Hospitals also are increasingly evaluating the chemical composition of materials, including IV bags, tubing, flooring, and furniture, to phase out chemicals of concern.
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Sourcing From Ethical Suppliers
Supply chain emissions account for most of healthcare’s carbon footprint, making procurement one of the highest-impact sustainability decisions a hospital can make. Beyond cost and delivery, hospitals are now evaluating suppliers on their environmental practices, labor standards, chemical safety, and packaging. Group purchasing organizations are accelerating this shift by incorporating sustainability requirements into contracts.
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Sustainable Food Purchasing and Menu Choices
Menus generate a carbon footprint, too. Growing food—especially raising animals for meat and dairy—is one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Sourcing locally and sustainably grown food shortens supply chains and supports regional economies. And cutting food waste through AI-enabled demand forecasting, which can predict patient head count, meal preferences, and seasonal patterns, keeps organic material out of landfills, where it would produce methane.
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Water Conservation
Hospitals are among the most water-hungry commercial buildings, using water extensively for HVAC cooling, sterilization, laundry facilities, kitchens, and patient care. Conservation strategies embrace low-flow faucets, aerators, showerheads, and toilets, as well as closed-loop cooling systems for medical equipment that can recirculate water through medical equipment, instead of using fresh water for each cycle. Structured conservation programs can decrease consumption and costs.
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Electronic Health Records
Electronic health records eliminate the paper, printing, and physical storage that traditional charting requires, not to mention the transportation costs and emissions related to moving records among facilities. In addition, digital imaging now replaces X-ray films and their chemical processing. The net benefit depends in part on the supporting technologies. For example, cloud systems running on renewable energy extend the gains, but reliance on energy-intensive data centers can offset them.
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Telehealth Appointments
Telehealth cuts back on emissions primarily by eliminating patient and provider travel. Several studies have quantified substantial carbon savings. For example, a Dana-Farber Cancer Institute study found that cancer care using telehealth and local visits would generate one-third less greenhouse gas emissions than traditional in-person care. As side benefits, telehealth reduces the travel burden on patients and improves access to care for those in rural areas or with limited mobility.
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Increasing Green Spaces
Healing gardens, green rooftops, and indoor plant fixtures give patients and staff direct access to nature, and the benefits are measurable. Research consistently links green spaces to improved patient outcomes in the form of reduced pain and anxiety, faster recovery, and greater satisfaction with care. These features also curb staff burnout and absenteeism. What’s more, green spaces deliver community benefits, such as stormwater management and urban heat island mitigation. This approach—sometimes called biophilic design—is gaining traction as hospitals recognize that nature is therapeutic.
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Reduction of Single-Use Devices
Single-use medical devices represent one of the largest sustainability opportunities in hospital operations. As FDA-approved, reprocessed versions become available, hospitals can replace single-use devices with reprocessed equivalents. Examples include some catheters, endoscopic devices, and orthopedic instruments. Not only do reprocessing programs divert millions of pounds of waste from landfills annually, but reprocessed devices typically cost 30% to 50% less than new ones.
How ERP Software Helps Hospitals Become More Sustainable
Most sustainability strategies depend on core capabilities: real-time visibility into resource consumption, accurate demand forecasting, and data that connects financial, inventory, and clinical systems. ERP software provides this foundation by integrating supply chain management, procurement, inventory control, and financial management into a single platform. For sustainability, this integration matters in several ways:
- Supply chain visibility: This is the most powerful lever. ERP systems provide real-time insights into procurement patterns, inventory levels, and supplier performance. AI-based demand forecasting improves healthcare inventory management by anticipating supply needs before shortages or surpluses occur, which avoids overordering and minimizes expired product waste. Some systems are beginning to use agentic AI that can autonomously adjust reorder points and trigger procurement actions when inventory approaches critical thresholds.
- Supplier sustainability scoring: In addition to evaluating vendors on traditional metrics, such as cost and delivery, ERP software allows hospitals to evaluate vendors on their environmental practices. As hospitals face growing pressure to report emissions, this capability becomes essential.
- AI-powered optimization: Machine learning models analyze consumption patterns and flag anomalies—such as unusually high supply usage in a particular unit or energy spikes that suggest equipment concerns—before they become costly problems. Predictive analytics can identify expiration risks in pharmaceutical and supply inventories, facilitating proactive redistribution or markdown.
- Reporting: ERP systems track energy consumption, water use, and waste volumes across facilities and generate reports for regulatory filings, board requirements, and accreditation submissions.
NetSuite ERP Powers Green Hospital Transformations
NetSuite Healthcare ERP consolidates financial, inventory, and operational data into a single platform, making it easier to track energy use, monitor supply chain performance, optimize procurement, and identify waste reduction opportunities. AI-powered demand forecasting cuts waste from expired supplies and overstocking—particularly important for pharmaceuticals and items with short shelf lives—by aligning inventory levels with actual consumption patterns. Real-time dashboards provide visibility into resource utilization, and AI-driven analytics can uncover patterns and anomalies that help measure progress toward sustainability goals.
The hospitals leading on sustainability aren’t treating it as a side project—they’re embedding it into procurement decisions, facility operations, and clinical workflows. The result: lower costs, better patient and environmental outcomes, and stronger compliance positioning. As reporting requirements expand and accreditation standards tighten, the gap between early movers and laggards will widen. The question isn’t whether hospitals can afford to prioritize sustainability. It’s whether they can afford not to.
Sustainability in Hospitals FAQs
What’s an example of hospital sustainability?
One example is single-use device reprocessing. When FDA-cleared, reprocessed versions are available, hospitals can replace single-use devices with less-expensive, reprocessed equivalents, resulting in fewer devices filling up landfills.
What are the four pillars of sustainable healthcare?
The four pillars of sustainable healthcare are environmental, economic, social, and clinical.
