Facilitating the Healthcare Plastics Recycling Council

The Healthcare Plastics Recycling Council (HPRC) represents a technical consortium of medical product company manufacturers, waste collectors and recycling companies working to enable recycling of select packaging waste materials within hospital and medical facilities. Founded in 2011, the objective of HPRC is to enable packaging reduction and increased recycling of select product packaging waste streams within hospital and medical facilities.

To support its mission and vision, HPRC engaged Antea Group to provide ongoing leadership, strategic planning, facilitation and technical support to aid the group in developing its agenda to increase recycling of plastics packaging and products. 

Antea Group currently facilitates this technical coalition of leading and globally recognized companies spanning across medical product manufacturers, healthcare organizations, waste collectors and recycling companies. We convene semi-annual gatherings that include member company representatives with global and corporate-level responsibilities for environmental affairs, public relations and external communications.

Since its founding, HPRC has advanced its objective to enable recycling of select plastics via several key initiatives:

• Mapping the healthcare plastics value chain by defining and identifying issues and barriers that disable plastics recycling;

• Creating the HospiCycle toolkit, an A-Z guide to starting, expanding, and optimizing and hospital plastics recycling program;

• Developing Design for Recycling Guidelines that focus on articulating product and packaging design considerations that could enhance recycling potential and value; and

• Conducting pilot study programs within healthcare facilities focused on building a data model to facilitate economic analysis of plastics recycling.

HPRC also engages and partners with key external stakeholders and works towards articulating the business case of HPRC through regular strategic visioning and planning sessions.

HPRC’s membership continues to grow, with members serving as role models for the industry along its entire value chain. Due to Antea Group’s strong leadership and depth of experience in facilitating long-term, multi-participant sustainability strategies, HPRC continues to engage our organization to provide support, coordination and strategic thinking and other activities aimed at implementation of the organization’s objectives.

HPRC efforts elevate the healthcare, recycling and waste industry’s position as a leading sector in regard to environmental responsibility. This group is unique in its focus on identification of plastics recycling barriers and solution development along the entire value chain. By working as a change agent, HPRC’s efforts benefit not only the member companies in their own sustainability strategies, but also benefit broader environmental and human health concerns by working towards increasing the overall recycling of healthcare plastics.