Improve Environmental Sustainability in Healthcare with Nixon Medical

Sustainability is a primary concern in almost every industry. Trying to find ways to marry business success with ecological responsibility is not easy, but it has become an increasingly necessary aspect of the modern healthcare facility. The exciting thing is, achieving sustainability can do more than ease our effect on the natural world; it can save resources, optimize operations, and increase efficiency.

In a perfect world, healthcare facilities would be in union with the environment, but this is not the case. Instead, the healthcare industry produces an abundance of physical waste and plays a part in carbon emissions as well. Environmental sustainability in healthcare comes down to finding practical and actionable methods that work with your budget. This often starts with identifying and stopping wasteful practices, shifting protocols to ensure proper medical waste disposal, and working with partners who can assist you with these needs.

Choosing the right medical laundry service can be a significant first step in obtaining environmental sustainability in healthcare facilities. Let’s discuss how your medical laundry partner can help you reduce your carbon footprint, reduce waste in healthcare, and increase the efficiency of your outpatient facility, all in one go.

Reducing Your Carbon Footprint

When it comes to environmental sustainability in healthcare, one of the first things to look at is your suppliers and methods of restocking essential equipment, garments, and linens. Even if your healthcare facility ran on 100 percent renewable energy like solar power, you would still have a carbon footprint as drivers deliver supplies and materials to your facility. This is, of course, a necessity. Cutting down on essential deliveries would harm employee retention, patient experience, and patient outcomes. But there are ways for you to establish more sustainable systems in your facility that reduce the impact of your suppliers by ensuring supplies are stocked according to your need promptly.

With suitable suppliers, restocking medical linens should be a simple and efficient process. They show up, deliver the materials you need in the right amounts, and then tailor your next delivery to your usage. This way, there are fewer deliveries to your facility, reducing emissions from the delivery vehicles and ultimately making life easier for healthcare facility administrators who can feel confident that they always have an adequate supply of linens and garments.

Furthermore, choosing a medical linen service that washes and restocks your linen and apparel supply eliminates the need for any in-house laundry services. In-house laundry can eat up large amounts of water and power, putting stress on your facility’s utility budget and further impacting your carbon footprint.

How to Reduce Waste in Healthcare?

The amount of solid waste produced by outpatient and inpatient facilities is staggering. Single-use textiles are often a significant contributor to the excessive waste that hospitals and healthcare facilities create. Patients and staff use these textiles once and then throw them away. In a busy outpatient facility, this can produce massive amounts of solid waste. By switching from disposable medical textiles to reusable medical linens and garments, you can reduce waste in healthcare facilities and help limit the potential for improper disposal and pollution.

Increasing Your Facility’s Efficiency

There is a hidden benefit that comes along with reducing your carbon emissions and waste in healthcare facilities: a more efficient facility. The tactics for obtaining environmental sustainability in healthcare mentioned above can dramatically impact your facility’s day-to-day operations. By eliminating in-house laundry and working with suppliers who actively manage deliveries of reusable healthcare linens, you free up resources and eliminate headaches for administrators. Administrators can then reallocate resources to increase sustainable procedures and spend more of their already limited time researching and implementing best practices for both the facility and the environment.

Your Sustainability Partner

The time to work toward a more sustainable operation for your healthcare facility is now. And Nixon Medical is the perfect partner in this pursuit. We’re committed to helping you achieve environmental sustainability in healthcare. Our team works with over 10,000 medical centers, providing fully-managed medical laundry services, product fulfillment, and inventory management services that help you work toward your sustainability goals.

Here’s what you can expect when you partner with Nixon Medical:

• HLAC-accredited laundering services
• Anytime access to route service representative
• Easy payment solutions
• No minimums required, ever
• Free deliveries for unexpected needs
• Contact-free service model

If you’re still unsure about changing to reusable medical apparel and linens, download our free eBook on why you should switch. And if you’re ready to take action and work toward a more sustainable future, we’re ready too. Nixon makes switching vendors a breeze. Let’s chat about your needs and how we can help.