Hospitals purchase an enormous amount of goods and services, which presents an opportunity to make sustainable purchasing decisions that positively impact our community and the environment.

• Since 2011, we have diverted nearly 125 tons of single-use devices from the landfills through a reprocessed medical device program and saved $10 million.
• We developed sustainable procurement guidelines and integrated sustainability criteria into the request for proposal (RFP) scoring matrix.
• In fiscal year 2022, 99% of the medical center’s spending through its group purchasing organization, Vizient, had at least one environmental attribute, such as a product containing forest stewardship certified wood or a plastic that’s recyclable.

New bedpans made of recycled blue wrap

In the fall of 2021, the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center successfully trialed its first product made of 90% recycled blue wrap: the BlueCON bedpan. This bedpan is made of melted blue wrap collected from our operating rooms. As of today, the more than 34,000 bedpans purchased annually by the medical center will now be BlueCON bed pans. In FY22, the medical center expanded its blue wrap recycling initiative, resulting in 2.9 tons of blue wrap being diverted from the waste stream, up from not even 1 ton in FY20. Today, the initiative is active in five facilities spanning 57 operating rooms.