Why Biodiversity Matters to Medical Device Manufacturers
05 Oct 2026
Understanding Environmental Dependencies Can Help Businesses Manage Risk and Build Resilience
For much of the past decade, corporate sustainability efforts have centered on carbon emissions. Companies have worked to understand their greenhouse gas footprints, reduce energy consumption, and establish carbon-reduction goals. That work remains important, but another environmental issue is receiving greater attention: biodiversity.
Biodiversity is the variety of living things and the ecosystems in which they exist. It includes plants, animals, trees, microorganisms, habitats, and the natural systems connecting them.
People often associate biodiversity with forests, wildlife, or endangered species. Those are certainly part of the discussion, but biodiversity is also closely connected to business. Every organization relies on healthy ecosystems in some way, whether through raw materials, water, packaging, manufacturing, transportation, or its broader supply chain.
For medical device manufacturers, understanding these connections can reveal risks and responsibilities that may not be immediately apparent.
Biodiversity Is a Business Issue
A plastics manufacturer or medical device company may initially wonder what its operations have to do with biodiversity. The answer becomes clearer when the organization looks beyond its immediate manufacturing processes and considers where its materials come from, what resources its suppliers use, and how its activities affect the surrounding environment.
Healthcare systems, hospitals, and other customers are increasingly asking suppliers to understand and communicate their carbon and biodiversity footprints. Sustainability requirements are becoming a more prominent part of requests for proposals and supplier evaluations. Customers want to work with organizations that manage environmental issues responsibly because those suppliers can affect the customer’s own environmental performance and reputation.
The medical device industry has some important considerations. People often think first about large pieces of capital equipment, but healthcare also relies on countless single-use devices and disposable products. As populations grow and age, demand for these products continues to increase, placing further pressure on natural resources.
Packaging is another significant consideration. Medical products often require paper, cardboard, timber-based materials, plastics, and other packaging to protect the product and support safe distribution. If forests are continually depleted or raw materials become more difficult to obtain, availability may decline and costs may rise.
The same principle applies to water. Many industries rely on freshwater for manufacturing, cleaning, cooling, and other operational needs. Healthy forests, soils, wetlands, fungi, algae, and other parts of the natural environment help support water systems. When ecosystems are weakened, both the availability and quality of water can be affected.
A business does not need to operate directly beside a forest or wetland to be exposed to biodiversity risk. Its dependencies and impacts may exist elsewhere within a complex global supply chain.
A Growing Part of ESG
Biodiversity sits naturally within the environmental component of environmental, social, and governance programs. However, it can also be viewed as a governance issue.
Good governance requires a company to understand the risks that could affect its future. If an organization does not know how it depends on natural resources or how its activities affect the environment, it may be overlooking potential threats to its supply chain, operations, reputation, and ability to meet customer expectations.
Investors increasingly want transparency around these issues. They want to understand what companies are doing, how environmental claims are being measured, and whether reported information can be trusted.
Employees are also helping move the discussion forward. People want to work for organizations that act consistently with their stated values. Younger generations in particular are paying attention to the environmental decisions companies make and what those decisions may mean for their children and grandchildren.
The pressure to act is therefore coming from several directions, including regulators, customers, investors, employees, and communities.
Reporting Requirements Are Evolving
Europe continues to be a major driver of sustainability regulation and reporting. Under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, biodiversity may need to be addressed when a company’s materiality assessment determines that it is significant to the business.
Requirements will continue to develop, and North America has generally moved more slowly than Europe. Even so, companies should not assume biodiversity will remain a voluntary issue indefinitely.
Many large global organizations are already moving forward without waiting for additional mandates. They are incorporating biodiversity into their ESG strategies because they believe it is the responsible course of action and recognize the business risks associated with delaying.
This is particularly relevant to the medical device industry, where several large manufacturers influence expectations throughout the market. As major companies expand their sustainability programs and request more information from suppliers, other organizations will need to respond.
Credibility Requires more than Claims
One of the greatest challenges in sustainability has been the lack of consistency behind environmental claims. Organizations have sometimes created their own definitions, measures, and promotional statements without sufficient oversight or independent assurance.
This has contributed to greenwashing and weakened confidence in sustainability programs. A company can say that it is sustainable, but customers and investors increasingly want to know what that statement actually means. What has been measured? What evidence supports the claim? Has someone independently reviewed the information?
Unsupported claims can expose an organization to reputational damage and legal challenges. Independent evaluation can help confirm that data is reliable and public claims are supported by evidence. It can also give customers, investors, and shareholders greater confidence in the company’s sustainability reporting.
Where Manufacturers Can Begin
For manufacturers beginning to address biodiversity, the size of the issue can feel overwhelming. The best approach is to treat it as a continuing management process rather than a project that must be completed all at once.
A familiar plan-do-check-act model can provide structure.
The first step is education. Organizations need to understand biodiversity and build that knowledge internally. External specialists and training providers can help, but a company should not rely entirely on outside support. It needs an internal champion who understands the subject, is passionate about it, and can keep the program moving.
Senior leadership commitment is equally important. Without support from the CEO or other members of the C-suite, biodiversity risks becoming another temporary corporate initiative. Leadership must demonstrate that the subject matters and connect it with the organization’s wider business and sustainability strategies.
The company can then identify its environmental dependencies and impacts. Where does it rely on water, forests, raw materials, or other ecosystem services? How do its production, shipping, distribution, and sourcing activities affect the environment? Where might biodiversity loss create risk for the business?
Once those questions have been explored, the organization can conduct a risk assessment. It is not possible to address everything immediately, so the company should identify the areas presenting the greatest risks and impacts. It can then prioritize actions based on significance and the potential return on investment.
Medical device manufacturers are already familiar with risk-management principles. The same basic thinking can be applied here. Start with the most significant issues, take action, measure the results, and continue improving.
Organizations that have completed carbon assessments or greenhouse gas reduction programs may also have useful structures in place. Biodiversity analysis follows a similar path, particularly when the assessment extends into the supply chain.
Results can then be incorporated into existing ESG programs, internal audit functions, and management reviews. The goal is not necessarily to create an entirely separate management system. It is to make biodiversity part of how the organization evaluates risk, measures performance, and makes decisions.
The Role of Independent Assurance
Third-party organizations can support companies at different stages of this process. Support may include education and awareness training, advisory services, evaluation of environmental data, implementation assistance, auditing, or validation of claims.
The help required will depend on the maturity of the organization’s sustainability program. A company beginning its biodiversity assessment will have different needs from one with an established ESG strategy that is preparing information for external reporting.
Independent assurance becomes particularly valuable as expectations move beyond self-assessment. It provides additional confidence that a company’s processes, data, and claims have been reviewed objectively.
Looking at Business Differently
Once organizations begin to understand biodiversity, they often start looking at their operations differently.
Instead of seeing a company simply in terms of inputs, processes, and outputs, they begin asking broader questions. How does the company affect the environment? What is it putting into the air or water? How is it disrupting natural ecosystems? What will its activities leave behind for future generations?
Biodiversity is not an issue an organization can address once and consider finished. Companies will continue learning, risks will change, and new opportunities for improvement will emerge.
There is still time to change course, but progress will require knowledge, sustained effort, and genuine commitment from senior leadership. Medical device manufacturers can begin by understanding their dependencies, focusing on their highest-priority risks, incorporating biodiversity into existing sustainability programs, and ensuring their environmental claims are supported by credible evidence.
