Abstract

The Green Deal Sustainable Care (GDDZ) is a Dutch initiative to reduce the impact of health care on the environment. More than 200 parties in the care sector, such as hospitals and nursing homes, have signed the Deal. They have laid down four themes: to reduce CO2 emissions (pillar 1), to produce less waste and reuse more materials and products (pillar 2), to ensure that less residual medicine finds its way into waste water (pillar 3) and to realise a healthier environment in care institutions (pillar 4). The Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport (VWS) is keen to know how ‘green’ care currently is. In order to be able to measure this, the results for each pillar must be demonstrated. RIVM and various experts have now explored what is necessary to achieve this.

This exploratory study shows that, as a result of the Green Deal Sustainable Care, care institutions in the Netherlands have become more aware of sustainable care and are committed to contributing to it. Currently, it is difficult to assess the specific impact of the Green Deal. The signatories want to identify together what they hope to achieve at the national level (main objectives) for each pillar so that they are better able to see what works and what does not, as well as the necessary agreements. This will make clear which of the themes must be tackled first and the measures needed to do so. The parties in question also jointly wish to determine the information required to be able to monitor the developments in sustainability (i.e. indicators).

Objectives, agreements and indicators will enable them to work in the same way and, as a result, share information and understand one another better; this will, in turn, mean that they can learn faster from one another. Also, monitoring is necessary to estimate long-term impacts. Working to make the care sector sustainable can then be organised as effectively as possible, which would, moreover, reduce the administrative burden for the care institutions already contributing. In conclusion, a clear format would make it more attractive for new parties to sign up to the Deal.

The theme ‘reducing CO2 emissions’ falls outside the scope of this exploratory study because a national monitoring programme is to be set up for this. Where necessary, we refer to this in the study.