Seeking MTAA Case Studies on Successful Product Stewardship

Sustainability is a growing priority area for the Government and numerous industries are transitioning to embrace more sustainable approaches to operating. It is important that as the sustainability movement grows, we as an industry can anticipate and ready ourselves for future reforms that will likely impact our industry.  The inclusion of healthcare plastics on the Minister for Environment and Water’s National Product Stewardship priority list for 2022-2023, indicates an increasing focus on how business activities are done in a way that minimises harm to the environment.

With this in mind, there are opportunities to demonstrate the great work the medical technology industry is undertaking in this space already.

The AI Group Product Stewardship Centre of Excellence (PSCoE) is a consortium of the UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures, the Australian Industry Group and Cox Inall Communications in partnership with the Australian Government through the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment.

PSCoE is seeking case studies from the medical technology sector that highlight best practices in implementing Product Stewardship, which they define as ‘those involved in designing, manufacturing, and selling products have a responsibility to ensure those products or materials are managed in a way that reduces their environmental and human health impacts, throughout the life-cycle and across the supply chain’

MTAA is calling out to members to provide case studies that demonstrate the adoption of a successful Product Stewardship Initiative. These will then be reviewed by the MTAA team and the most suitable will then be submitted to PSCoE to publish on their website. We have provided an overview of criteria that ideally should include the following.

Hospital Uptake: Does your initiative have wide-scale adoption across hospitals

Circular Economy: Does your initiative not just minimise waste but actually re-use waste as a meaningful resource that serves an input in other economic activity

The volume of Waste: What is the amount of waste being managed by your initiative?

Please submit your case studies to eoipolicy@mtaa.org.au