SZ: Mr. Werner, three years ago, as CEO of the University Medical Center Essen (UME), you announced the goal of converting your clinics into a “Green Hospital”. In view of the pressure to save and staff shortages, do you have any problems other than worrying about the climate balance?
Jochen Werner: Studies show that the operation of a single hospital bed requires as much electricity as four single-family houses, a hospital as much as a 25,000-inhabitant town. Healthcare emits 4.4 percent of emissions worldwide – more than global air traffic and shipping combined. 500 liters of water are used per patient in German hospitals every day and several kilograms of waste, some of which are harmful, are produced. Basically, every single hospital is a gigantic polluter, so climate protection in the healthcare system is a challenge that all hospitals will have to face sooner or later.
Despite this, and no matter how important climate protection is, shouldn’t the care of the patients be the priority in a clinic where life and death are at stake for many patients?
Of course, the care of the patients has the highest priority. But acting in a sustainable and climate-friendly way is not a contradiction in terms. In some aspects, this even improves patient care.
Jochen Werner is Chairman of the Board and Medical Director of the University Hospital Essen. The University Medicine Essen (UME) comprises 32 clinics and 24 institutes, in which around 70,000 inpatients and 300,000 outpatients are treated every year.
(Photo: University Medicine Essen)
For example?
Many people don’t like the taste of hospital food and it’s unhealthy – these are clichés that are unfortunately also true to a large extent. We want to convert both the food on offer in the canteen and that for the patients to the “Planetary Health Diet” concept. That means something like “Healthy eating for people and the planet”. It is a mostly plant-based diet with a focus on fruits, vegetables and legumes, less meat, less highly processed foods. Properly prepared, such dishes are tasty – and they support the recovery of patients.
And are very expensive.
According to a recent study, hospital food in Germany costs an average of 5.32 euros per patient per day. Adjusted for inflation, costs have actually decreased over the past 18 years. That sounds good at first, but in reality it is another saving at the expense of quality. This is partly due to the billing system of the health insurance companies: There, the supply of food competes with items such as administration, IT, laundry and cleaning service for non-medical services. We are in contact with politicians so that something can change here.
Even without the help of politicians, you have plans. How far have you come with the goal of becoming a green hospital?
We informed our approximately 11,000 employees about the plans, and the response and support was enormous. 130 employees from all areas have agreed to work as sustainability officers in their departments to make our house greener – voluntarily and in addition to their working hours.
What does this commitment look like in concrete terms?
Team Green receives a constant stream of ideas from employees. Recently, among other things, it was about better waste separation, about a ban on coffee capsules in the departments, about saving plastic bags when transporting blood and tissue samples to the laboratory through the introduction of easy-to-clean transport containers. Other suggestions such as the recycling of anesthetic gas are currently being implemented, and a new bicycle parking lot with 230 parking spaces on the UME premises has just been completed. On the initiative of an employee, a wildflower meadow grew on a flat roof, then another employee who is a hobby beekeeper settled bee colonies there.
That’s a nice detail – but it doesn’t do much for the climate balance.
I think every project makes a measurable contribution to environmental protection. Above all, however, such projects motivate us to contribute something ourselves – even if it is only through prudent behavior: In some doctor’s rooms and care bases the lights are on day and night, you could get used to turning them off when nobody is around. Or heating with the windows open: we could save a lot of energy if we avoided that. And that’s where the big numbers come in, the big levers that we’re trying to use, of course. In 2021, for example, we already switched completely to green electricity at the Essen University Hospital – part of the UME.
Which, in view of the huge consumption, causes huge additional costs.
It was a larger investment, yes – the investments in the year before and after were correspondingly smaller, we’re taking it step by step. The advantage of electricity is that we can measure it directly and see the success – we still lack many key figures elsewhere. That is why we are working intensively to find out more precisely what the university hospital consumes, produces and emits. For example, it is about reducing the consumption of single-use plastic packaging – to do this, we first have to record where and how much such packaging is available.
Let’s stay with this example – how far are you with it?
It is often a matter of breaking down and structuring the large, superordinate areas into sub-areas. The introduction of refill systems for sterile pipette tips, which in turn have recently been made from fully recyclable plastic, has resulted in savings of around 65 percent in plastic waste. Another example is the paper sub-area: For example, we only fill the printers in the UME with recycled paper – this way we can save ten tons of CO₂ per year.