Packaging, supply & logistics
to opportunities for better-designed decontamination systems and circular supply chains.
Looking ahead
For all the momentum behind sustainable packaging, the industry’s next steps are likely to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Incremental reductions in material use, improvements in package design and greater compatibility with alternative sterilisation methods are far more likely to reach commercial scale in the near term than wholesale replacement of today’s sterile barrier systems.
Engineers and manufacturers must balance environmental ambition with patient safety requirements.
accounts for around 5% of the carbon of a product (range 2–7% in our paper),” he says. He believes the greatest environmental gains will come not from recycling, but from designing products and packaging for reuse. “The best thing would be to make their packaging reusable, and that requires setting up reverse logistics,” he says. “Companies that deliver products to hospitals should also be taking packaging back for reuse.” Where that is not feasible, he recommends minimising packaging volumes, avoiding plastics where possible, extending sterile shelf life and replacing printed instructions with QR codes.
Current procurement systems, however, do little to accelerate that transition. Although NHS England has introduced initiatives such as the Evergreen Sustainable Supplier Assessment and the government’s Design for Life road map to support more sustainable procurement, Bhutta believes existing incentives remain weak and that regulatory requirements can discourage even relatively modest packaging improvements.
“In most circumstances, to change the packaging of a product requires going through the entire regulatory approval process – a costly and time- consuming exercise for industry,” he says, arguing that the MHRA should adopt “a measured approach to regulation to encourage innovation”. Perhaps most controversially, Bhutta questions whether recycling deserves its current prominence within healthcare sustainability strategies. “Recycling is largely a waste of time and a distraction,” he argues. Instead, he believes healthcare systems should invest in infrastructure that enables products and packaging to be reused safely wherever clinically appropriate. “Let’s make our products and packaging reusable wherever possible.”
That argument inevitably prompts questions around patient safety, but Bhutta rejects the notion that environmental improvements require lower clinical standards. “Nobody has said that we should compromise patient safety,” he says, pointing instead
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Pearl believes regulatory compliance will continue to define the pace of innovation. Any new packaging system must satisfy the same rigorous requirements as those already in use. As he explains, “Any new materials must comply with the required standards and regulations just as the current materials do – safety aspects cannot be compromised.” Standards such as ISO 11607, which governs sterile barrier systems, along with environmental management standards including ISO 14001, provide part of the benchmark against which new materials will ultimately be judged.
Commercial reality is equally important. According to Pearl, widespread adoption will only occur if one of two conditions is met: either existing technologies become obsolete through regulation, or manufacturers are convinced that investing in alternative materials will deliver a compelling commercial return. As he notes, “The move from a pilot project to widespread use is dependent on a new technology creator persuading a large medical device entity to invest in the transition from pilot to fully realised production processes… This will never be a short process.”
Bhutta, meanwhile, argues that the greatest opportunities extend beyond the package itself. Packaging innovation should form part of a broader shift towards circular healthcare, where procurement, decontamination infrastructure and reverse logistics are designed to keep products and materials in use for longer. “The NHS should state it will always preferentially purchase products and packaging designed for reuse,” he argues, while acknowledging that today’s fragmented systems remain a significant obstacle to achieving that ambition. Ultimately, the future of medical-device packaging will not be determined by a single breakthrough material. It will depend on how successfully engineers, manufacturers, regulators and healthcare providers balance environmental ambition with the uncompromising demands of patient safety. Lower- impact packaging is undoubtedly gaining ground. Still, the industry’s greatest challenge remains ensuring that the same confidence matches every environmental gain in performance, sterility and reliability that healthcare professionals have come to expect. ●
www.medicaldevice-developments.com
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