White Paper • Published 2026 • Length 16 pages
How HLAC-accredited reusable linen cut hospital emissions at Baptist Health South Florida

Hospitals across the United States are under pressure to meet climate targets without compromising patient care or infection prevention. The Health Sector CARES Pledge from Health Care Without Harm asks signatories to cut Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and reach carbon neutrality by 2050. Baptist Health South Florida has committed to measuring and reducing emissions across all scopes.

This paper documents how that commitment translated into a specific operational change: shifting hospital linen processing to a partner with HLAC accreditation and TRSA Hygienically Clean Certification. NOVO Health Services processes BHSF's textiles out of an 80,000-square-foot Miami plant that opened in April 2022 and runs on automation, heat reclaim, and RFID inventory tracking. The result is measurable reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, water use, energy use, and solid waste, alongside local job creation and stronger supply chain resilience.

The U.S. healthcare sector accounts for 8.5% of the country's greenhouse gas emissions, ranking it the fifth-largest emitter in the world. Hospitals consume substantial energy and water and generate large volumes of waste, so sustainability frameworks increasingly focus on sector-specific actions.

How BHSF approached Scope 1 and 2

BHSF adopted a comprehensive sustainability strategy in 2024 that begins with greenhouse gas inventories. Those inventories set baselines and surface the largest emissions sources for targeted reduction. Hospital operations emit through two main pathways: Scope 1, from on-site boilers and medical gases, and Scope 2, from purchased electricity, heating, and cooling. Life-cycle assessments find that Scope 3 supply-chain emissions usually account for 60 to 75 percent of a hospital's total carbon footprint, but Scope 1 and 2 remain what hospital administrators can act on most directly.

BHSF has invested millions of dollars in energy management across 12 hospitals and more than 200 outpatient facilities, including centralized building controls and automation. That program has produced sustained reductions in annual electricity consumption and recognition from the ASHE Energy to Care program.

Linen processing is a significant but underused opportunity. Compared with single-use alternatives, reusable healthcare textiles cut solid waste generation by 93 to 99 percent, water consumption by 41 percent, greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent, and total energy use by 28 percent.

One reusable isolation gown can replace 75 single-use disposables over its lifecycle, generating 19.83 kg of CO₂-equivalent compared with 108.98 kg for the equivalent volume of single-use product.

The footprint of laundry itself

A comprehensive life-cycle assessment of hospital laundry operations found average emissions of 0.225 kg CO₂-equivalent per item and 0.508 kg CO₂-equivalent per kg of laundry processed, with natural gas consumption responsible for 75.7 percent of on-site emissions. The figure makes the case for reusables, and it also makes the case for choosing a processing partner that runs cleaner than the industry average. The technologies that close that gap — ozone wash systems, wastewater heat reclaim, and RFID inventory management — are the same technologies that operate inside an HLAC-accredited plant.

NOVO Health Services maintains HLAC accreditation across all of its plants. The Miami facility passed its first HLAC inspection with zero observations requiring remediation. HLAC accreditation is the most rigorous framework in the industry for healthcare textile processing, covering facility design, operational practices, employee training, and customer relationships, and it aligns with federal standards from CDC, OSHA, and other agencies for infection prevention.

NOVO Health pairs HLAC accreditation with TRSA Hygienically Clean Certification and TRSA Clean Green Certification. The combination keeps two questions in scope at the same time: is the linen clinically safe, and is the operation producing it environmentally responsible. Few processors hold both designations across every facility.

NOVO Health's Miami facility opened in April 2022. It processes 40 million pounds of laundry annually with capacity for 60 million pounds, and it serves both acute and sub-acute facilities across South Florida. Three technologies do most of the environmental work:

• Thermal iron technology. Energy-efficient ironing systems optimize temperature control and heat distribution. They integrate with the plant's thermal management strategy to capture and reuse heat.
• Wastewater heat reclaim. Heat recovery systems capture thermal energy from wastewater to preheat incoming water. Up to 60 percent of original energy expenditure is recovered, with payback in 12 to 24 months and up to 90 percent wash-water recycling.
• RFID tracking. Embedded RFID tags enable item-level traceability across the lifecycle, dropping loss rates from the industry-typical 10 to 15 percent to under 3 percent and producing the granular data hospitals need for compliance and ESG reporting.

Plant design as worker safety

South Florida is a hot environment to run a laundry. The Miami plant runs cooling pipes and continuous cool air flow at each workstation, and the floor plan positions dryers parallel to tunnels rather than in the U-shape that creates bottlenecks. The layout reduces musculoskeletal strain and keeps production flow steady — the same design choices that won the plant TRSA's 2024 Plant of the Year recognition.

Based on industry life-cycle assessments and operational data, the shift to reusable linens processed at the Miami plant produces the following impacts at BHSF's scale of 12 hospitals and more than 200 outpatient facilities:

The Miami plant employs 186 team members and processes textiles for healthcare facilities throughout South Florida. Local processing supports BHSF's responsible sourcing strategy and cuts transportation emissions compared with distant alternatives. NOVO Health's 90 percent retention rate provides stability and career development for that workforce.

BHSF benchmarks community impact in its sourcing — spending with local, small, minority, and disadvantaged businesses — and has begun embedding sustainability and local-impact standards into its contracting and sourcing procedures. The partnership demonstrates that vendor relationships can advance community impact, clinical performance, cost control, and environmental stewardship at the same time.

Community health and environmental justice

Climate impacts — air quality degradation, extreme heat, water scarcity — fall disproportionately on low-income communities and communities of color. Measurable emissions reductions in a local processing operation contribute to broader regional environmental-justice goals.

The Miami plant's RFID-enabled tracking gives BHSF item-level visibility into linen utilization, replacement cycles, and wash counts. The data supports comprehensive sustainability reporting and creates a continuous improvement feedback loop.

NOVO Health's technology infrastructure integrates with BHSF's existing hospital management and supply chain systems, removing manual tracking and producing automated updates for inventory, billing reconciliation, and compliance documentation. The plant was built with flexibility for future technology — additional automation, more energy recovery, and emerging sustainable processing.

Industry analyses suggest that moving the share of reusable healthcare textiles from today's 10 percent market share to a minimum of 50 percent would deliver enhanced supply chain resilience, significant cost savings, and measurable environmental improvements at sector scale. Lawmakers in New York and California are considering mandates requiring minimum percentages of reusable personal protective equipment in healthcare facilities.

Alignment with ESG frameworks

Investors, regulators, and patients are asking healthcare organizations to show measurable progress on environmental, social, and governance objectives. The partnership produces concrete metrics — emissions, water, waste, energy, local employment, retention — that map directly to ESG reporting frameworks and to climate adaptation goals as climate impacts intensify.

Reusable linen management is a high-leverage, low-disruption pathway for hospitals to achieve climate targets while maintaining clinical excellence and supporting community development. The NOVO Health-BHSF model is replicable.