Reducing Our Footprint

INTEGRATING SUSTAINABILITY INTO BUSINESS OPERATIONS

Three male employees stand around a computer having a conversation.

Patient health and safety is our absolute priority in manufacturing medical technology. We have a responsibility to ensure the quality and sterility of our devices, as well as their safe delivery. As a global citizen, we also understand the importance of caring for our world and its natural resources, and strive to minimize the environmental effect of our operations by reducing our environmental footprint as well as promoting environmental stewardship.

Guided by our 2020 Environmental Performance Goals, we proactively manage our operational energy use, greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), regulated and non-regulated waste, and water. Our global Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) Policy sets the standard and establishes a performance improvement system to identify goals, measure progress, and integrate sustainability into decision-making. The corporate EHS team oversees compliance, environmental management and remediation, health and safety, and training. The team also collaborates with regional directors who are responsible for EHS policy and programs in the Americas, Asia Pacific, China, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

We strive to incorporate EHS considerations when designing new products, considering impacts throughout the product lifecycle from materials to manufacturing, distribution and disposal. Our Sustainable Packaging Working Group strives to reduce the environmental impact of product packaging while maintaining our rigorous quality standards to ensure products reach customers in perfect condition.

ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP HIGHLIGHTS FROM FISCAL YEAR 2018

Our strategy to promote environmental stewardship is borderless. From Italy to California, we implement projects that reduce the environmental footprint of our operations and manufacturing facilities.

We achieved four of our five 2020 Environmental Performance Goals early, and are tracking to exceed them. Compared to our FY13 baseline we reduced:

Energy use by 18%
Greenhouse gas emissions by 33%
Non-regulated waste by 39%
Water use by 16%

We continue to work toward achieving our regulated waste goal, which is at a 1% increase from FY13. In FY18, we reduced our regulated waste by 9% compared to the previous year.

We take a holistic approach to make the world a healthier place. This includes managing the energy we consume, the waste we generate, and the water we use.

In FY18 Medtronic made the following strides:

We invested in energy-efficient technology and generated 69,100 MWh of energy on-site through fuel cell and cogeneration systems, including 4,300 MWh of new capacity.
We continually look for ways to eliminate waste at our sites to reduce costs and lessen our environmental impact. In FY18, we limited our waste generation to 25,367 metric tons, a nearly 8% decrease from FY17.
We proactively take steps to curtail our water use. For example, at our North Haven, CT site, we implemented three projects to reduce potable water use that will save an estimated 24,600 cubic meters of water each year.

Medtronic scientists and engineers follow EHS guidelines when designing new products. This standardized approach incorporates environmental considerations from the start and helps us meet both regulatory requirements and customer expectations. For example:

In FY18 we reduced landfill waste by recycling or reusing 171MT of medical sensors from our Nellcor business, which specializes in pulse oximetry devices.