Fact Sheets
Buying Green: Kaiser Permanente’s Green Procurement and Supply Practices
As one of the largest health care organizations in the country, Kaiser Permanente's national environmental purchasing policy has become a model for other organizations.
Over the past several years, Kaiser Permanente's procurement and supply team has:
- Eliminated millions of vinyl gloves — and drove down the price of alternatives — by switching to latex-free, PVC-free gloves in all facilities.
- Purged 630,000 grams of mercury (roughly 1,390 pounds) from within our facilities — today Kaiser Permanente is 95 percent mercury free.
- Powered 46 trucks in our courier fleet with biodiesel fuels, reducing greenhouse emissions by decreasing Kaiser Permanente's diesel usage from 115,000 gallons per year to less than 100,000.
- Implemented reusable linens and patient gowns that can be washed and reused with an average lifespan of 60 uses rather than a single-use paper product. This drastically reduced the amount of waste produced by Kaiser Permanente and translated into a 24 percent cost savings for the organization.
- Prevented thousands of bone stimulators from being disposed of in a landfill by negotiating a return process with the manufacturer. Annually, Kaiser Permanente orders more than 1,900 of these devices, none of which will end up in a landfill.
In 2006 Kaiser Permanente focused on green aspects of Information Technology, and changed its contract for computers and software to require Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) -registered equipment. Kaiser Permanente was the first in the health care community to make this commitment, and several health systems have since followed. Since July 2006, Kaiser has purchased 60,239 desktop computers, 66,470 monitors, and 8,775 EPEAT-registered notebook computers. Through these purchases, Kaiser Permanente has decreased energy use by 55.2 million kilowatt-hours — enough energy to power 4,866 households for one year, reduced greenhouse gases equivalent to removing 3,438 cars from the road for one year, reduced hazardous waste by169.4 tons, avoided 10,398 pounds of toxic materials, and saved $4,784,598.
In 2006 Kaiser Permanente increased its Single-Use Medical Device Reprocessing program to include many of the high-volume usage products approved for reprocessing by the United States Food and Drug Administration. The program reduces by 7.6 tons per year the waste sent to landfill for a typical 250-bed medical facility. Nationwide, this program also delivers more than $3.2 million in savings per year.
