At ERRIN’s Health Working Group meeting, regional, EU and healthcare stakeholders discussed how circular approaches can support more resilient healthcare systems.
VinylPlus Healthcare contributed to the ERRIN Health Working Group meeting “Next Generation of Healthcare: Resilience and Circularity”, held in Brussels on 23 June 2026, sharing practical lessons from hospital-based medical device recycling projects in Belgium and France.
The European Regions Research and Innovation Network (ERRIN) is a Brussels-based network of innovative European regions, working to strengthen the regional and local dimension in EU research and innovation policies and programmes. The event brought together health, sustainability and innovation stakeholders to discuss how circular approaches can help build more resilient healthcare systems.
Ole Grøndahl Hansen, Coordinator of VinylPlus Healthcare, took part in the regional showcase session, presenting VinylPlus Healthcare’s work on the collection and recycling of non-contaminated PVC medical devices from hospitals. His presentation focused on the practical conditions needed to make circularity work in healthcare, including high-quality sorting, controlled material streams, documentation, regulatory clarity and cooperation across the value chain.
Drawing on experience from hospital projects in Belgium and France, VinylPlus Healthcare highlighted that circular solutions for plastic-based medical devices are both necessary and possible, but cannot be treated as a simple waste-management exercise. They require close collaboration between hospitals, waste operators, recyclers, medical device producers and downstream users of recycled material.
The presentation underlined why PVC can be a useful starting point for circularity in healthcare. As a widely used material in essential medical applications such as tubing, PVC can provide sufficient critical mass and well-defined material streams for mechanical recycling, provided that collection and sorting are carefully organised.
The programme also included speakers from the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety (DG SANTE), who addressed resilience and the Critical Medicines Act, and Health Care Without Harm Europe, who presented circularity as a core enabler of healthcare.
