Practice Greenhealth’s annual sustainability benchmark report provides a powerful snapshot of the health care sector’s environmental progress. In 2023, nearly 430 participating facilities demonstrated remarkable sustainability achievements.
The participating hospitals collectively:
- Saved more than $182 million on sustainability initiatives in 2023
- Reduced more than 1 billion kBtus of energy
- Saved 147 million gallons of water
- Invested $834 million in sustainable spending
- Diverted over 328 million pounds of waste from the landfill through recycling
- Avoided more than 252,000 metric tons of GHG emissions through mitigation projects
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Saved enough water to fill 223
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Diverted waste equivalent to the
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Avoided GHG emissions equivalent
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The annual benchmark report highlights best practices for sustainability integration in 11 different impact areas from the 2024 awards cycle (2023 data). It provides best-in-class data on how well health care facilities are implementing a wide variety of sustainability programs, which represent the many pathways a facility can take towards more sustainable health care delivery. This data also captures the impact of sustainability initiatives, including cost-savings, environmental benefits, and other co-benefits.
This data provides one of the few public snapshots of greenhouse gas emissions from the health care sector including early estimates of Scope 3 emissions.
Key highlights include substantial environmental and social progress:
- 27% of applicants last year generated or purchased renewable energy. That’s 132 facilities using their resources, purchasing power, or buildings to add more renewable energy to our energy grids - an act that benefits everyone.
- In the past two years, 49 more facilities eliminated PVC and DEHP from at least two medical product categories, removing harmful chemicals from hundreds of thousands of products.
- EV charging stations installed increased by 10%, adding over 200 new stations to expand access across health care facilities in the U.S.
- 284 of last year’s applicants have made a formal external commitment to fight climate change. That’s 66% of last year’s participants lending their voice to fight the single greatest threat facing public health.
- In 2024, 85% of applicants reported they had created an internal committee focused on racial equity, up from 77% in 2023. 74% reported making an intentional effort to partner with community organizations representing people of color, a 12% increase from 2023.
- From 2020 to 2024, the percentage of hospitals eliminating desflurane nearly doubled from 29.6% to 61.3%, with facilities reporting a 66% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to removing 6,900 cars from the road.
The data in this report serves as a critical tool for hospitals, health care supply chains, governments, and academic partners to drive sustainable health care delivery and track meaningful environmental progress.
Practice Greenhealth is extremely grateful to the hundreds of individuals, hospitals, facilities, and health systems that provided data for this analysis through the Environmental Excellence Awards application process.
