Accelerating sustainability action in healthcare with the SAT: Peer insights
Hospitals and healthcare systems are increasingly demonstrating that integrated environmental sustainability action is an essential part of high-quality care delivery. As environmental pressures increase, hospitals are rethinking how care is delivered, supported, and sustained over time.
During our “Accelerating sustainability through peer learning and strategic action” session at the World Hospital Congress 2025 in Geneva, healthcare leaders shared their experiences and insights on how they are embedding sustainability into everyday operations and care delivery. The session brought together four experienced healthcare leaders that shared how the GSC Sustainability Accelerator Tool (SAT) supported them by providing strategic insights and areas to focus in advancing their sustainability efforts.
Participants, which included hospital executives, high level experts and sustainability leaders, discussed the challenges, practical solutions, and organizational cultural shifts required to move from commitment to action and how sustainability can strengthen quality of care delivery, lower costs, and increase trust across healthcare systems. The discussion highlighted key insights around integrating sustainability into high quality care delivery, knowledge and capacity strengthening, workforce engagement, supply chain and procurement, community engagement and external partnerships, as well as waste reduction, food, and cost savings.
Integrating sustainability into high quality care delivery
One of the key challenges is how to integrate sustainability into care delivery without it becoming a separate project that creates extra work for staff and patients. An important example shared in the session was to include sustainability activities into the overall hospital projects budget alongside quality improvement and innovation.
These three key pillars: quality, innovation and sustainability, when intentionally aligned to reinforce one another, ensure that sustainability is not seen as an add-on, but rather as an integrated part of everyday operations.
Translating strategy into action is particularly challenging at the clinical level. Leaders emphasized that real change occurs within microsystems, where clinicians interact directly with patients, supplies, and workflows. Encouraging staff to question existing practices and examine them critically proved to be one of the most effective approaches.
The SAT maturity assessment, metrics, and guidance to improve were highlighted as vital to translating strategy into action and participants emphasized how important it was to have healthcare-relevant measurements and indicators to guide strategic initiatives.
Knowledge and capacity strengthening
The first step toward meaningful sustainability action is understanding existing knowledge levels amongst staff to deliver appropriate training activities. Examples highlighted during the session included general education training to all staff to explain organizational goals and direction. More specialized training, delivered at the departmental level, can be used to focus on practical topics such as medical waste management and reducing single-use items.
In some organizations, sustainability training became mandatory, with expectations of 5-10 hours per year for hospital staff. Beyond formal training, staff were required to either lead or participate in at least one sustainability goal. This reinforced the idea that sustainability was a shared responsibility rather than a voluntary interest.
Another approach encouraged participation by motivating and rewarding staff to take on sustainability initiatives or learning. The argument for this approach was that it may be more difficult to create the necessary shift in the organizational culture by forcing it.
Workforce engagement and incentives
Engaging staff requires more than training and governance. Recognition and incentives play an important role in maintaining enthusiasm and participation.
Some organizations introduced internal awards to recognize teams or individuals who implemented sustainability projects.
Listening to colleagues across departments was also emphasized. Many effective initiatives emerged from frontline insights rather than top-down directives. This approach helped to embed sustainability into organizational culture and avoided perceptions of sustainability as an imposed burden.
Governance, accountability, and leadership support
Strong governance structures are essential to sustain sustainability momentum. Rather than creating separate sustainability departments or units, many hospitals established multidisciplinary sustainability and social responsibility committees. These committees included representatives from clinical, operational, pharmacy, procurement, and administrative areas.
In some cases, the committees reported directly to the executive board and were accountable for developing annual sustainability plans. These plans outlined initiatives across multiple domains and were reviewed and approved by executive leadership, along with the required budget. This formal inclusion strengthened commitment and clarified expectations across the organization.
Adaptive leadership support is critical for continued success. Executive endorsement helps to legitimize sustainability efforts and enable sustainability to be embedded into hospital standards.
Supply chain and procurement
Supply chain management was highlighted one of the most complex areas of sustainability in healthcare. While Scope 1 and 2 emissions were easier to address, Scope 3 emissions pose more significant challenges, with progress depending heavily on procurement practices and supplier engagement.
One way to address this is by working with smaller and local suppliers. Some hospitals are prioritizing local suppliers, particularly for food, to reduce emissions and support local economies. This can present its own set of challenges. Many small suppliers lack the capacity to measure or report their carbon footprint, raising questions about what hospitals could realistically demand and how to initiate constructive dialogue. However, one way this can be addressed is by providing training and guidance to the local suppliers on carbon and environmental impact measurement in line with the hospital requirements. This not only requires capacity building but a mindset where the hospital is seen as an integral part of the community with a wide sphere of influence.
Public procurement rules sometimes prevent favouring local suppliers directly. In these cases, hospitals can adjust procurement criteria by assigning greater weight to environmental performance. This approach allows sustainability to influence supplier selection, favouring more sustainable local suppliers while complying with national public procurement rules.
Community engagement and external partnerships
Hospitals also emphasized the importance of demanding suppliers to continue offering reusable products. In some cases, suppliers attempted to replace reusable items with single-use alternatives despite proven success in hospitals. Organizations recognized the need to resist these changes and to collectively demand lower prices for reusable options.
There is a clear need, and a strong case, for hospitals to come together as health systems in order to influence suppliers given their enormous purchasing power and the fact that suppliers should respond to hospitals’ needs and not the other way around.
Individual hospitals often lack sufficient influence to change market conditions. As a result, collective action becomes a key strategy. Groups of hospitals can work together to promote circular economy principles, including reduced packaging and increased reuse. By acting collectively, hospitals increase their leverage with suppliers and encourage larger companies to participate in sustainability efforts.
Sustainability efforts extend beyond hospital walls. An effective way in which hospitals can accelerate sustainability action is by taking part in citizen councils, mayoral councils, and mobility planning initiatives. Collaboration with primary care centres, community professionals, and citizens helped align healthcare sustainability with wider societal goals.
Waste reduction, food, and cost savings
Avoiding unnecessary activity was consistently identified as one of the most effective sustainability strategies. Reducing waste at the source was seen as more impactful than managing waste after it was created.
Examples included reducing unnecessary use of single-use items (usually plastic) such as masks and nonsterile gloves. In some cases, more than one third of waste was eliminated without any financial investment. These outcomes demonstrated that many sustainability initiatives are low cost or cost neutral and should be viewed as investments rather than expenses. Acting early was repeatedly described as far less costly than delaying action.
Food was a key action area identified related to both waste management and environmental impact reduction. Food strategies are increasingly emphasizing local sourcing to support communities and reduce emissions. Plant based meals were promoted carefully, recognizing that patient acceptance required gradual change. Rather than eliminating meat, hospitals reduced portion sizes and improved the appeal of vegetarian options. Assessing what patients really consumed proved essential to designing effective and acceptable interventions. By questioning long standing routines and using evidence to guide decisions, teams uncovered solutions that reduced food waste while maintaining quality of care and reducing costs.
Embedding sustainability into healthcare systems
Providing and facilitating spaces for discussions where healthcare professionals can share challenges and opportunities is key to the Geneva Sustainability Centre’s mission supporting hospitals to advance in their sustainability journeys. Participants agreed that hospitals driving sustainability action are most effective when they integrate it into quality improvement and everyday clinical practice.
Closing knowledge gaps, supporting staff to question existing practices, engaging suppliers thoughtfully, and ensuring strong leadership all contribute to lasting change.
Many sustainability initiatives require little, or no financial investment, and deliver benefits across environmental impact, operational efficiency, and patient satisfaction.
Environmental sustainability is most successful when is treated as a shared responsibility, rather than a separate issue, becoming an essential part of high-quality healthcare delivery.
