Building water resilience in the health sector

This case study examines how Mediclinic Southern Africa (MCSA) implemented water-saving technologies, specifically laundry wastewater recycling plants, across its hospitals to ensure operational continuity amidst water scarcity.

• Mediclinic Southern Africa (MCSA) implemented laundry wastewater recycling plants across six hospitals in 2024, resulting in water use reductions ranging from 23% to 70% and combined estimated annual savings of approximately R1.5 million.
• Cape Gate Hospital achieved the highest efficiency gains among the six facilities, reducing water consumption by 70% with an average monthly saving of approximately R35,000 and a payback period of about 3 years. Each recycling plant costs approximately R1.2 million.
• The water resilience strategy began with a 2022 pilot at Panorama Hospital, where a recycling plant returned 75% of laundry wastewater to the laundries and used the remaining 25% as greywater for toilets.
• Beyond laundry recycling, MCSA employs several other water management tactics: installing smart meters and a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system for monitoring, recycling water from theatre autoclaves, using boreholes to supplement municipal supplies, and experimenting with ozone to replace laundry chemicals.
• MCSA identifies that building water resilience is a systematic process moving from low-cost initiatives like awareness and monitoring to cost-intensive technologies. The organization emphasizes that solutions must be tailored to each facility and that proactive investment is necessary to avoid reacting to shocks when it is too late.

APA

GreenCape (n.d.). Building water resilience in the health sector. https://greencape.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/GEER_Mediclinic-–-Case-Study-1.pdf

Chicago

GreenCape. Building water resilience in the health sector. n.d. https://greencape.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/GEER_Mediclinic-–-Case-Study-1.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=GreenCape |title=Building water resilience in the health sector |url=https://greencape.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/GEER_Mediclinic-–-Case-Study-1.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{greencapendbuilding, author = {{GreenCape}}, title = {{Building water resilience in the health sector}}, institution = {GreenCape}, url = {https://greencape.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/GEER_Mediclinic-–-Case-Study-1.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }