A Sustainable Healthcare System is one that improves, maintains or restores health, while minimizing negative impacts on the environment and leveraging opportunities to restore and improve it, to the benefit of the health and well-being of current and future generations. Sustainability is becoming increasingly important aspect of healthcare delivery.

Healthcare has a significant detrimental environmental cost through CO2 emissions, energy use single use equipment and disposables. A study published in 2018 estimated that health care in Australia contributes to 7 per cent of the entire country’s CO2 emissions, with roughly half of this contribution coming from hospitals alone. Occupying a relatively small physical portion of a hospital, operating theatres produce around 20 per cent -30 per cent of an institution’s waste. Operating theatres are 3 – 6 times more energy intensive than the wards.

Strategies focusing on sustainability in surgery have the potential to have a high impact within the health-care industry. Through the sustainability committee, we will explore the ways surgical and medical services can become more sustainable while maintaining a high quality patient care without compromising outcomes.