Hartmut König

Sustainability Coordinator of MED

Lauric Weber

Head of ZEISS Initiative Green Product Design

Are we green enough?

"Every one of us must come to the understanding that sustainability is our responsibility, that it needs to become part of our value system, embedded in the company culture and lived," says Hartmut König, Sustainability Coordinator at MED. In this ZOOM MED interview, he and Lauric Weber, Head of the ZEISS Green Product Design initiative, talk about the challenges of developing sustainable medical products.

We develop products and solutions that are designed to offer new approaches to diagnosis and therapy, and this supports social sustainability in that it promotes human health. Why shouldn't we allow ourselves to be content with this?

Lauric Weber: Unfortunately social sustainability isn't the whole picture, and to not do more would go against our values and our responsibility.

Hartmut König: Cotton candy is a relevant example in this context. It was invented by a dentist. This begs the question: did he invent it because it tastes good or because he wanted more patients? It's true, the work we do every day helps people live better lives. But we also have competitors. If we want to set ourselves apart, then we need to make a difference when it comes to sustainability because customers are going to be asking for this in the future.

Lauric Weber: And not only them, but also people who apply to work for us. In my experience, young applicants are already asking what we're doing to protect the environment. This is an important criterion for the coming generation. As well it should be. Our employees — everyone from product development to marketing to sales — are the ones who make a difference. We all play a role in deciding whether our products are going to be greener in the future.

What can MED do to develop more sustainable products? What do we need to focus on?

Hartmut König: We need to think differently. From the point of view of sustainability, we should be looking at the entire lifecycle of the product — from the initial idea all the way to the end of the product's life — and defining levers that enable us to exert influence on sustainability. This could take the form of very simple questions, such as "Where do the materials we use come from and how much energy does it take to produce them?"; "How can we optimize product transport?"; "What are our recycling options when a product reaches the end of its life?"

Lauric Weber: This is an important point. There are aspects of sustainability which need to be taken into consideration as objectives at the very beginning of a product's lifecycle. Even before we start development, we need to derive requirements from these objectives and include them in the product specification sheet. We don't have any established process for this at the moment. But this is something we are working on in the ZEISS "Sustainability" Key Group Program and the ZEISS-wide initiative "Green Product Design". Markus Esseling from IQR and myself are overseeing the latter project. ZEISS has a very diverse product portfolio, so the challenge is defining a lever which can be individually applied to each ZEISS business group. That's what we are working on right now.
And one more important point: finding good solutions requires us to think outside of our current structures and areas.

Are there any ideas for making products such as our single-use drapes more sustainable?

Lauric Weber: There's a pilot project underway in Oberkochen for that. We are looking into whether single-use products like drapes can be manufactured using recycled materials or whether the products themselves can be recycled. It's our responsibility to establish a smart recycling strategy.

Hartmut König: But we are coming up against regulatory challenges here. The directives for medical products often contradict the demands of sustainability. For example, blister packs like the ones we use for our treatment packs for refractive surgery may not be manufactured using recycled materials. On top of this, much of the waste that comes out of medical practices and clinics is considered hazardous waste. In Germany, this type of waste is typically incinerated instead of being integrated into a recycling process.
Making medical products more sustainable comes with its own set of challenges. But we can't afford to do nothing. We need to start somewhere, and we need to look for good examples — even abroad — that motivate us and show us how we can be more sustainable.

To conclude: How green are we really?

Lauric Weber: Our products have always been built to last. This really goes a long way in supporting sustainability. As long as the devices are in use, there's no need to waste additional resources. But we could definitely be doing more!

Hartmut König: From a regulatory point of view, we are required to take back our products when they reach the end of their lifecycle. When the products are returned to us, we check whether they can be prepared for sale on the pre-owned market. If they can't, then we recycle them.

Lauric Weber: But our products aren't designed so that we can take them apart and put everything back in the cycle. There's room for improvement here as well.

Hartmut König: In short, we aren't as green as we could be. Every one of us must come to the understanding that sustainability is our responsibility, that it needs to become part of our value system, embedded in the company culture and lived.

Thanks to both of you for the informative talk!