Green Hospital - Resource Efficiency in Swiss Hospitals

Which hospital processes are particularly environmentally relevant and how can hospitals reduce their environmental burden while becoming more cost-efficient? Although the health sector is the fourth most significant consumer sector from an environmental point of view (after food, mobility, and housing), there are very few comprehensive environmental assessments.
The project Green Hospital: Environmental Impact Assessment, Resource Efficiency and Hands-On Applications, which was selected for funding by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) as part of the National Research Programme Sustainable Economy: resource-friendly, future-orientated, innovative (NRP 73), aims to close this gap.
The research team, consisting of the Life Cycle Assessment research group of the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) , the Institute for Economic Studies Basel (IWSB) , and the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics (IML) , is investigating relevant hospital processes from an environmental point of view, the efficiency of hospitals from an economic and ecological perspective, and how processes in hospitals can be designed to use resources more efficiently. Together with partner hospitals, concrete implementation strategies will be conceived and tested.

↗ The following definition of sustainability is used for the project.