Reusable Textiles Revolution

Health Care Without Harm has partnered with the Norwegian Retailers' Environment Fund (NREF) on a two-year initiative (2024–2026) focused on sustainable textile production and consumption across Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Europe. This project seeks to tackle the global plastic crisis by encouraging sustainable production practices and reducing the sector’s reliance on plastics and harmful materials.

Our goal is to support healthcare providers in adopting the waste hierarchy (rethink/redesign, reduce, reuse, recycle), with a particular focus on medical textiles. These materials are among the top six plastic items used in healthcare and can represent up to 10% of total hospital plastic waste.
 

The project will run through four key stages:

1. Educate: Raise awareness and educate health care staff, including clinical and health management personnel, about the health and environmental impacts of health care plastics. This stage will focus on available solutions and strategies for reducing and substituting single-use plastics (SUPs).
2. Pilot: The teams will work with four health care providers in Europe, Southeast Asia, and Latin America to pilot solutions aimed at reducing single-use plastics in health care. Taking a global approach will facilitate mutual learning, cross-pollination of ideas, and a deeper understanding of the issue within different health systems.
3. Advocate: Promotion of policies at the health system and hospital levels that incentivise plastic reduction and mandate the use of reusable medical textiles. This advocacy stage is critical for creating a supportive environment for sustainable practices in health care.
4. Scale: Training resources will be made publicly available to increase momentum for reducing plastic in healthcare globally and promote the widespread adoption of reusable medical textiles. Scaling up these efforts will significantly reduce the environmental impact of healthcare operations worldwide.