How to Green Your Linen Program🍃
Hey there, I’m Greg.
By now, we’ve talked a lot about healthcare linen efficiency, infection control, and compliance. But today, I want to shift gears a bit. What if I told you that your hospital’s laundry operation could be one of its biggest sustainability wins – or one of its biggest environmental liabilities?
With at least 5 billion pounds of healthcare textiles processed yearly in the U.S., the environmental impact of hospital laundry is pretty staggering. We’re talking about massive water consumption, chemical waste, and sky-high energy use, not to mention the impact to our landfills of disposing of damaged linens.
So today, we’re tackling a big question: How can hospitals reduce their laundry-related carbon footprint, and why does it matter now more than ever?
I also dive deep on this topic in my book, but to start, I’ll begin with an example scenario.
The St. Mary’s Linen Overhaul
Let’s talk about St. Mary’s Hospital, a (fictional, but all-too-realistic) hospital that faced an environmental wake-up call.
For years, they outsourced linens to NotGreenCycle Textiles, a mega-laundry that got the job done but wasn’t exactly eco-friendly.
When an accrediting agency introduced new sustainability guidelines, St. Mary’s realized just how bad their linen footprint really was:
They consumed more water each day than an entire town.
Their outdated equipment was guzzling electricity and natural gas.
There was zero transparency about chemical usage or textile waste.
But instead of shrugging it off, St. Mary’s took action. They partnered with an eco-conscious laundry provider and implemented:
Energy-efficient continuous batch washers that cut water usage by 60%
A carbon footprint dashboard to track environmental impact
A synthetic linen program to reduce drying times and fabric waste
Staff training programs to ensure linens weren’t being overused or wasted
All of these moves led to lower costs, fewer resources wasted, and full accreditation approval for St. Mary’s.
How to Green Your Linen Program
So with that, if you’re wondering how to make your hospital’s laundry program part of the sustainability solution, here’s what you can do:
Start with the Numbers: Track water, gas, electricity, and waste. If you’re using more than 2 gallons of water per pound of linen, there’s room for improvement. In fact, most measures, a modern accredited healthcare laundry uses less than 0.8 gallons of water per pound of processed linen. If you're feeling really bold, tack meters on your big resource consumption hogs to see who the big energy culprits are.
Invest in Smarter Equipment: Upgrading to energy-efficient washers, dryers, and heat-recovery systems can slash utility bills and emissions. Around 80% of the energy used in washing is recoverable with the right technologies.
Switch to Reusable and Synthetic Textiles: Reusable gowns, linens, and scrubs reduce waste by 84-87% compared to disposables, and as we learn in my book, synthetic textiles cut drying times by 60%. Take this case study as an example — the University of Maryland Medical Center avoided generating 138,748 pounds of waste in one year by using reusable textiles, which also translated to around $38,800 in savings annually.
Audit Your Chemical Usage: Use biodegradable, low-impact detergents to cut down on harmful wastewater discharge. Healthcare laundry wastewaters are one of the biggest contributors to environmental harm in healthcare’s carbon footprint.
Optimize Transportation: Laundry logistics are a hidden carbon culprit. If your laundry trucks are clocking too many miles, route optimization or fewer deliveries per week can reduce emissions.
Final Thought
Sustainability is good for the planet. But it’s also great for business.
But aside from the financial and organizational benefits of greening your linen program, let’s revisit my earlier question: why does it matter now more than ever?
The healthcare industry is responsible for about 5% of the world’s greenhouse gases, which contribute to climate change. There’s a vicious cycle here – climate change harms human health, increasing the need for healthcare, thereby increasing healthcare’s contribution to climate change – and on and on it goes. So reducing our carbon footprint is an urgent responsibility on the shoulders of healthcare facilities everywhere – and the laundry is an ideal place to start.
If you’re wondering where your facility stands, now’s the time to find out. Let’s chat.
Just sing by replying to this email to discuss how your hospital can wash smarter, not harder.
Until next time,
Greg
Compliance Shark