Decarbonizing Healthcare

Last week we wrote about the environmental disaster of plastics choking the world’s oceans and the consequences for human health through the food chain. This week let’s look through a different lens at another environmental disaster of our own making – the carbon footprint of healthcare itself. Here’s something you may not know. If the global healthcare sector were a country, it would be the fifth-largest greenhouse gas emitter! A report from Health Care Without Harm calculated that the environmental impact of healthcare amounts to 4.4% of global net emissions – the equivalent of 514 coal-fired power plants.