Nic Hunt, Global Head of Sustainability, Nelipak Healthcare Packaging
The healthcare sector, which safeguards the lives of communities around the world, faces a critical challenge when it comes to balancing two core needs: sterility to ensure patient safety, enabled by single-use materials and packaging, and sustainability in reducing environmental waste generated by non-reusable materials.
While sterility is non-negotiable when it comes to healthcare products and packaging, there is the potential for environmental impact, which presents opportunities to rethink how sterility is achieved – through material selection, package design, recyclability and renewable-attributed inputs.
Leaving room for innovation can create real potential for the industry to make measurable progress towards reducing environmental impact over time, without losing sight of patient safety.
Keeping patient safety at the heart of it all
At Nelipak, patient safety is the starting point for every packaging decision. Our packaging solutions are first and foremost, designed to meet the performance requirements of international packaging standards such as ISO 11607 and ISO 13485.
We then consider design for sustainability principles encompassing four main levers: reducing material usage, improving recyclability, incorporating recycled content where appropriate, and exploring alternative material sources. These improvements are implemented without compromising technical, regulatory and sterile barrier requirements.
This is how we balance sustainability and sterility – through disciplined design, testing and application-specific validation.
Designing for circularity while keeping recycling restrictions in mind
Across our portfolio, we are also increasingly designing with recyclability in mind. This includes solutions such as our CR27 coated Tyvek® roll stock and lids, LLDPE/Tyvek® header bag range and selected APET tray formats which have been certified as recyclable. We also continue to introduce recycle-ready and recycled content solutions through our newly created Ecovate™ product portfolio.
In 2025, Nelipak successfully worked with global medical device companies to launch products with renewable content and recyclable certification, helping them meet the growing demand for sustainability in hospitals and healthcare.
Beyond material selection, circularity also depends on how by-products are managed. From the outset, we ensure our materials are suitable for recycling into feedstock and for use in high-quality future applications.
Ultimately, recyclability depends not only on material design, but also on the collection and recycling infrastructure available in each market, making it essential to distinguish what is technically recyclable and what is recycled in practice.
A fragmented global landscape with a shared opportunity
Sustainable healthcare packaging has no single solution. Packaging requirements vary by device, process, and end use, making it essential to evaluate each application individually rather than assume one solution works across all formats.
This complexity is further shaped by regional differences. Regulatory frameworks continue to evolve at a different pace across markets, while most medical device manufacturers operate globally, making greater alignment and harmonization increasingly important.
For customers, they benefit most when sustainability progress can be implemented practically across multiple markets, not just in one region. Our newly launched Asia-Pacific Technical Development Center in Singapore serves an important role, supporting customers across the region through access to our global manufacturing and innovation network, and the ability to customise healthcare packaging in a meaningful way.
We are fortunate to work with leading medical device manufacturers in the markets we serve. While each sustainability journey is different, the starting point is often the same: understanding current packaging design, performance requirements, and practical opportunities to improve sustainability. The most effective progress comes from this collaborative, application-specific approach.
What is encouraging is that the healthcare industry now has a clear opportunity to reduce environmental impact in a meaningful way. Rather than a trade-off, sustainability can now be framed as a design challenge, and one that the industry is increasingly well-positioned to solve.
Having been in the healthcare packaging industry for nearly three decades, I’ve seen sustainability come a long way in becoming an increasingly critical component for modern healthcare packaging businesses.
Balancing sterility and sustainability is one of the key challenges confronting the industry today, and there has never been a more opportune time to rethink how to navigate this through innovation, design and smart decision-making.
I’m also encouraged by the meaningful progress we’ve made without compromising patient safety. I share my reflections on how we can become better positioned to reduce environmental impact in a practical and scalable way in this article.