Sustainability

The issue of climate change can’t be ignored and addressing it takes big-picture thinking. We’re committed to helping healthcare run more sustainably—implementing practices that are scalable and eco-friendly, while encouraging our partners to do the same by offering solutions that help them reduce waste while saving on cost.

We help health systems throughout their sustainability journey, listening to their challenges and problem-solving, together. We then create sustainable programs that meet our partners’ unique needs. The solutions we develop are designed to reduce waste while lowering costs. Here are our programs at-a-glance:

We help our partners reduce waste by reprocessing their medical devices so that they may be used again. In 2020, Medline ReNewal took in 5,417,706 instruments to be reprocessed and diverted 1,018,673 pounds of waste from landfills, an amount equivalent to 36,381,821 water bottles.

This program transforms exam gloves into clean, renewable energy. Since the program’s inception in 2018, we have transformed 2,156 pounds of gloves from 23 different partners into clean energy.

The tote exchange program delivers products in reusable totes instead of cardboard containers. This program plays a significant role in reducing the amount of corrugated cardboard in our supply chain and is offered to our qualifying partners nationwide.

Rather than having our customers pay to dispose of used operating room (OR) towels, we facilitate a pick up free of charge. Instead of being sent to the landfill, the towels are repurposed to be used in non-healthcare industries. Since 2018, 68 metric tons of towels have been re-purposed—14.5 of those in 2020.

As dependence on disposable products surged during the pandemic, so did concern for landfill avoidance. As a countermeasure, we launched a new closed-loop recycling program—recycling used, disposable curtains into new disposable curtains. Our customers collect and ship used curtains in designated collection boxes. Once received, the curtains are sanitized, melted down and repurposed into new curtains.

Our Centurion recycling program provides customers with an eco-friendly option to recover premium surgical instruments from the waste stream, while reducing regulated medical waste costs. Since 2019 the program has diverted 236,109 pounds of instruments from landfills, an amount equivalent to 8,432,809 water bottles.

Hospitals produce more than 5 million metric tons of waste each year.¹ Conserving raw material and energy resources is key to reducing environmental impact. At Medline, we’re making progress by ensuring surplus products are put to good use, responsibly sourcing and producing more green products and innovating sustainable packaging solutions for our partners across the healthcare continuum.

We donate our surplus product to clinics in need around the world. In 2020, we diverted 513 metric tons of waste from landfills by providing nonprofit organizations with unused supplies that fill a crucial gap for healthcare facilities in low-resource countries.

In 2020, Medline launched a Sustainable Packaging Lab—a cross-functional team of R&D, sustainability, operations and design experts and engineers. The team works to reimagine the way we see packaging for a more sustainable future. Here are a few of our latest packaging innovations that are reducing waste not just across our own supply chain, but our partners’ as well.

To preserve Earth’s natural resources, we invest heavily in renewable sources of power. We established our renewable energy portfolio in 2009, when our first geothermal facility was built, and it’s been growing ever since.

Medline has three geothermal facilities located in Mundelein, Illinois; Arnhem, Netherlands; and Dubuque, Iowa. Geothermal technology heats and cools buildings using the constant temperature below the earth’s surface, which is warmer than the air above it during the winter and cooler in the summer.

Since 2016, we’ve invested $12.6 million in solar energy globally. Our portfolio consists of 1.2 million square feet of solar rooftop space that holds over 24,000 solar panels.

The 2,754 newly installed panels on the roof of our 680,000 square-foot headquarters are expected to generate an average of three megawatt hours of clean, renewable energy each day—the equivalent of removing 2.1 metric tons CO₂e emissions from our atmosphere daily.

We build and operate our facilities in sustainable ways. Today more than 18.8 million square feet (94%) of our distribution space is Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified and new Medline buildings are constructed to meet LEED certification standards.

We also have nine locations that are certified according to ISO 14001, a set of global environmental standards set by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). ISO 14001 lays out the necessary criteria for an environmental management system (EMS) and outlines the steps a company or organization should follow to set up an effective EMS.

Conserving energy and other resources is critical to curbing climate change, and an integral part of achieving ISO 14001 certification.

We’re meeting ISO standards by:

• Installing LED lighting in production and warehouse areas
• Identifying and executing alternative means of waste disposal
• Updating our equipment and processes to use less water
• Making our equipment and processes more efficient