NewGen Surgical Customers Eliminate Over 250 Tons of Single-Use Plastic and 460 Metric Tons of CO2e with Upcycled, Bio-Based Products for Healthcare
Environmental Stewardship from NewGen Surgical Customers Lead to Significant Carbon and Plastic Reductions from the Healthcare Supply Chain
San Rafael, California, February 27, 2024 – NewGen Surgical customers have gone above and beyond this past year in their commitment to healthcare sustainability. In July alone, NewGen Surgical customers eliminated nearly 8 tons of single-use plastic and over 14 metric tons of CO2e during the highly celebrated Plastic Free July campaign, double last year’s Plastic Free July reductions and eight times the amount from the previous year. Today, the company celebrates its customer’s achievements of reducing over 250 tons of single-use plastic and 460 metric tons of CO2e from the healthcare supply chain using NewGen Surgical products.
Hospitals and health systems around the world have the opportunity to create large impacts through small changes. NewGen Surgical customers have met these milestones through a simple substitution of their single-use plastic disposables for upcycled, bio-based alternatives.
Replacing one plastic product in one healthcare system with an upcycled, bio-based alternative leads to a significant cumulative impact – year after year. Using the Small Change, Big Impact EPP Calculator, a powerful tool that tracks and reports single-use plastic waste and CO2e reduced with NewGen Surgical products, NewGen Surgical found that with a leading healthcare system switching their procedure kit packaging trays to NewGen Surgical trays, this conversion yields an annual reduction in single-use plastic of 13,735 kg and a reduction of 8,462 kg of CO2e. Accumulated over five years, this results in a reduction of single-use plastic of 68,675 kg and 42,310 kg of CO2e. In ten years, this healthcare system would have reduced 137,350 kg of single-use plastic and 84,620 kg of CO2e with a single product substitution alone.
In Healthcare Without Harm and Kaiser Permanente’s latest white paper, titled, “Catalyzing Collective Action to Decarbonize Healthcare”, authors of the white paper promote product innovation with sustainable materials as a high-impact solution to decarbonizing the MedTech value chain. This is an idea that NewGen Surgical has dedicated its work to the past decade, substituting petroleum-based inputs with renewable materials to help the sector green its operations. Healthcare stakeholders are urged to support the development of low-carbon products through procurement commitments and providing preferential purchasing for suppliers cutting emissions in their operations and products.
NewGen Surgical makes reducing single-use plastics, CO2e, and chemicals of concern in healthcare easy for hospitals and healthcare systems by providing simple, sustainable product substitutions that are clinically effective and maintain the same performance as their plastic counterparts. These sustainable alternatives drastically reduce the carbon and plastic footprint of healthcare without disrupting the workflow of doctors, surgeons, nurses, and medical practitioners while requiring no extra training or effort to do so.
The company anticipates expanding its customer base, with products now CE-marked and sold globally.
“Our customers’ commitment to environmental stewardship shows through these milestones they have achieved. When thinking about how a typical plastic medical product yields only a few grams of plastic, these milestones are a true testament to how one small change can make a large impact”, CEO and Co-Founder Rob Chase states, “We are honored to help hospitals and health systems globally reach their goals in climate resilience while providing products that not only satisfy the needs of the patients and staff involved but the planet as well.”
About NewGen Surgical Inc.
NewGen Surgical, Inc. develops and manufactures sustainably designed plant-based, single-use medical devices and products. The company’s mission is to offer clinically effective product solutions to measurably reduce plastic and Scope 3 emissions. NewGen Surgical products are California Prop 65 compliant, free of intentionally added BPA or BPA-derived plastics, mercury, phthalates, PFAs, and PVC. In addition, they are the first surgical products to be USDA BioPreferred Certified. NewGen Surgical offers a ring basin for the OR, the first and only medical product to achieve Greenscreen certification with Clean Production Action. In addition, the company currently offers 6 product lines, available directly or through major national distributors and internationally with approved CE marks.
