Chief supply chain officer Ryan Koos and the full sustainability team at San Diego-based Sharp HealthCare – already known as heavy hitters among West Coast hospital systems in reducing emissions and driving down waste – had a chance two summers ago to go even further in shrinking the organization’s carbon footprint.

In what has become a familiar refrain, they didn’t throw it away.

Moving away from a previous vendor for the reprocessing of what typically are single-use, high-value medical devices, Sharp instead bolstered its existing Prime Vendor distribution agreement with Medline by signing on for Medline ReNewal, a service in which these devices are restored to their original quality, functionality and sterility in accordance with strict FDA standards, then sold back to customers at up to a 50% discount, saving them money and diverting waste from U.S. landfills.

This Earth Month, Koos (right) and his colleagues across four acute-care hospitals and three specialty hospitals couldn’t be more pleased with the gains they’ve made since 2023.

“We thought we hadn’t pushed what we could do from a reprocessing aspect far enough. We wanted to do more,” Koos said. “Strengthening our relationship with Medline has allowed us to reprocess and buy back more items across more categories, which means less cost to us and less waste to the landfill.

“And honestly, ReNewal just made sense for us, with Medline already our supplier for medical-surgical supplies. Why not draw some extra efficiencies in deliveries and receiving to reduce our carbon footprint even more? We thought, ‘We already know Medline’s logistics. We know its trucks. So let’s have our reprocessed items coming at the same time on the same trucks as all the rest of our Medline supplies.’ In that way, ReNewal really has helped streamline our business.”

It’s also designed to make improved sustainability not just a goal but a convenience. Most hospitals and surgery centers have their own in-house sterile processing departments (SPDs) to decontaminate reusable medical-surgical instruments. But for other items such as air transfer mattresses, electrophysiology catheters, vessel-sealing devices and compression sleeves – expensive and sometimes electronic equipment that otherwise would go in the trash after one use – Medline provides collection bins, meaning all clinicians need to do is put each item in the right bin. Devices are then picked up by Medline technicians and sent off to a 100,000-plus-square-foot reprocessing center in Redmond, Ore., ReNewal’s “home” since the program launched in 2012.

Seeing what’s inside

What goes on at Redmond is its own special kind of surgery. A crew of more than 200 production staff painstakingly disassemble, inspect, decontaminate, repair, reassemble and test an average of 20,000 devices per day – from a portfolio of thousands of different devices made by more than 250 different manufacturers – restoring them to like-new condition using processes developed by a team of 40 Medline engineers and carefully monitored by the FDA. Many reprocessed devices can gain FDA approval quickly. Some can take up to a year or two to receive clearance. Once they’re cleared, they go into Medline’s supply chain inventory to be purchased and used again by ReNewal customers around the country, with Medline now the manufacturer on record.

Abby Miller, marketing sales director for ReNewal, noted that an air transfer mattress, for example, can be refurbished as many as five times. But sometimes clinicians need reassurance.

“There can be a stigma around reprocessing,” Miller said. “For example, a new iPhone versus a refurbished one – you think the new one is going to work better. Some surgeons and nurses may have seen reprocessing before it was regulated fully and they just don’t believe in it. So, as FDA regulations dictate, every device must have the same form, fit and function, so a clinician wouldn’t know the difference between using a reprocessed item or a new one.”

Koos said that has been precisely the case with Sharp staff who might initially have been skeptical. Visits to the Redmond facility also have been effective at winning over the unconvinced about what ReNewal can do.

But perhaps most influential are the numbers Sharp attributes to its use of ReNewal: approximately 83,000 pounds of waste diverted from landfills in 2024 alone.

Koos said the cost savings of buying reprocessed devices is a secondary consideration.

“If it costs us less, great,” he said.

Yet the dollar amounts, too, are staggering: more than $3.7 million in combined savings for Sharp through ReNewal since August 2023, including more than $2.3 million in 2024 alone. In the first three months of 2025, Sharp saved more than $685,000. That’s all money that can be redirected to improve patient and community health initiatives.

‘A place at the table’

Medline’s assistance doesn’t stop there. To get clinicians to buy in more on sustainability and improve their collection compliance, the ReNewal team periodically conducts what it calls “The Educational Blitz,” a series of facility-wide in-person educational sessions and discussions with ReNewal customers over several days.

Sharp, which is working toward a goal of being carbon neutral by 2040 – meaning an organization removes the same amount of carbon dioxide it puts into the environment – also has its own sustainability council composed of champions from all over the organization: top executives, facility managers, supply chain experts, physicians and nurses. And who else attends these gatherings? Medline. Nic Tagle, the ReNewal sales representative supporting Sharp, has sat in with the council on several occasions in addition to making regular visits to Sharp’s hospitals to educate about proper device collection.

“It’s great to see Sharp leaders actively addressing environmental sustainability, whether it’s tackling barriers to recycling, implementing food-waste composting or exploring commuter solutions to reduce their carbon footprint,” Tagle said. “And then I’ve also had an opportunity to present to the Sharp council with the latest progress in their use of ReNewal and how Medline is supporting their sustainability efforts as a vendor partner.”

Koos says he can’t put a price on that type of cooperation as Sharp strives to stand out as a leader in heavily green California.

“With sustainability efforts, you don’t want to be stagnant,” Koos said. “You want to always be strategizing what you can do more of. Bringing Medline in there to present to our council, with a place at the table, they really are a part of our sustainability team, which I think is a big deal. The ReNewal team consistently meets with us to look for opportunities: ‘Hey, you might be able to do this. Here’s where we’re seeing some issues where you’re having a little more waste and we think we could do better.’ When I hand a five-year operating plan to our CEO and CFO, there’s no question ReNewal’s now a part of that plan.”

Learn more about the program benefits and the products that can be reprocessed through Medline ReNewal.