New partnership encourages health care systems around the world to adopt sustainable and green products and services

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WINNIPEG—October 27, 2014—The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) is pleased to announce that it is partnering with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Joint UN Programme for Green Procurement in the Health Sector in an innovative new project to encourage governments of developed and emerging economies to adopt sustainable and green public procurement practices in their health care sectors.

Last week at the Green Growth Forum in Copenhagen, IISD and UNDP collaborated on a highly successful session entitled Public Procurement and Eco-Innovation in the Health Sector. It explored how performance-based specifications (PBSs) have the potential to spur green production of pharmaceuticals, medical devices and health products in the health sector on a large scale.

“One of the main focuses of this project will be to reduce the amount of ecotoxins that are released into our environment via medical products,“ said Oshani Perera, director, Public Procurement and Infrastructure Finance at IISD. “These toxic substances currently abound in our health care systems, in pharmaceuticals, medical devices, medical products (such as drugs) and the overall health care infrastructure.”

“We are also pleased to announce that we will be conducting a study to determine how many toxic substances are currently prescribed or mandated officially in procurement standards in certain countries in Asia. These then end up in all manner of medical products, including gowns, syringes, bed linens, mosquito nets and more.”

Results from a recent study conducted at IISD’s Experimental Lakes Area (IISD-ELA) revealed that estrogen found in a commonly used birth control pill can have detrimental effects on aquatic ecosystems, highlighting the negative impact that ecotoxins can have on our water supplies and environment. It found that introducing synthetic estrogen into a lake negatively affected the reproductive cycles of fathead minnow and led to a near extinction of the population. The estrogen interfered with the minnow’s ability to reproduce.

IISD’s Public Procurement and Infrastructure Finance program provides policy advice, technical assistance and research services to encourage governments to adopt sustainable public procurement practices, as they transition towards a greener economy. It recently released a study that investigation of the use of PBSs in public procurement globally. One of its most recently launched projects in an initiative to encourage green public procurement in Bhutan.

For more information please contact Sumeep Bath, IISD media and communications officer, at sbath@iisd.org or +1 (204) 958 7740.