Single-Use MedTech Is on Notice: Inside the UK’s Circular Economy Offensive

Design for Life Roadmap

The UK’s Design for Life roadmap from the Department of Health and Social Care lays out a bold vision: by 2045, eliminate all avoidable single-use medtech products and create a true circular system. Summarised in 30 actionable goals across six core challenges, leadership alignment, behavioural change, economic incentives, regulation, infrastructure, and innovation, it’s a strategy built not just for aspiration, but execution.

By 2030 alone, it estimates £75 billion in GDP growth, 500,000 new jobs, 156,000 tonnes less clinical waste, and up to 56% fewer emissions. These are serious numbers that should attract serious attention. It’s a bold transformation agenda, but also a massive one.

Yes, it’s dense – condensing it into an elevator pitch is nearly impossible. Anyone serious about this document will need hours of focused study. But if you’re a medtech manufacturer, regulator, or investor in the UK, you need to understand it now. Because it will reshape your product strategy, your roadmap, and ultimately, your bottom line. 

What is the Design for Life Roadmap?

Design for Life is the UK’s first national circular economy strategy tailored to health and social care. It’s a system-wide plan jointly developed by the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England, the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra), and other public health stakeholders. The roadmap sets out how the NHS and its suppliers can radically reduce waste and carbon emissions while boosting resilience and economic opportunity.

The strategy identifies six critical enablers for transition and outlines 30 practical actions that cover everything from updated procurement rules to product design standards, closed-loop logistics, and pilot programs for reprocessing and reuse. It is closely aligned with broader government policies, including the UK Medical Technology Strategy, the NHS Net Zero Plan, and the Greener NHS initiative, ensuring that circularity is embedded into long-term healthcare delivery, not bolted on.

It’s a blueprint for how the UK will meet its sustainability, industrial strategy, and healthcare resilience goals all at once. 

MedTech Needs to Move

The NHS spends over £10 billion annually on medtech, almost the same amount the entire UK medical device sector produces in value (~£14 billion in 2024). It’s one of the largest single buyers in the world.

And here’s the reality: thousands of tonnes of single-use medical products, tourniquets, electrodes, surgical instruments, devices with embedded electronics, are used once and discarded.

Medical equipment is already responsible for 10% of the NHS’s total carbon footprint. That makes it a natural target in the UK’s net-zero and sustainability drive.

But this is bigger than sustainability. The Design for Life roadmap positions circularity as a national resilience and industrial agenda.

The question isn’t whether change is coming. It’s how much, and how fast, MedTech is ready to change with it. 

Reshaping Your Product Roadmap

This is not a theoretical exercise. If you sell to the NHS, you need to get your roadmap in order – now.

Circularity doesn’t mean recycling at end-of-life. It means designing for reuse, repair, remanufacture, or reprocessing from the outset. It means building new business models, leasing, take-back programs, service-based pricing. It means understanding how procurement rules will evolve and how regulation will be used to accelerate compliance.

If you’ve relied on single-use products to drive revenue, ask yourself: 

• What would you design today if your goal was to replace your top-selling device? 

• How would you beat your own catalogue if you had to start from scratch? 

• Who is already working on it, and how close are they? 

Most importantly: if you’re not developing reusable alternatives to your own products, someone else is, and they will be first in line when procurement policies change. 

Regulation and Procurement Will Drive Change

One of the biggest challenges to circularity is outdated regulation. The UK acknowledges that many standards were written in a different era, before repairability or reusability were even considerations.

But this time, procurement may move faster than the regulators. The NHS can reshape market behaviour through tenders, framework agreements, and category-level guidance.

We’ve seen before that procurement, combined with clear regulatory signals, is the fastest way to force change upstream, at the point of design.

The roadmap commits to eliminating avoidable single-use devices by 2045. That means shifting money away from disposal and into frontline care.
Devices that fail under NHS decontamination protocols too often end up discarded, replaced, or repurchased – creating a hidden loop of pseudo-single-use consumption, cost, and environmental impact. That cycle is no longer acceptable.

Manufacturers are best positioned to fix this. But only if they act early. 

As momentum builds, the NHS must ensure rollout speed does not compromise patient safety. Infection prevention teams have spent decades building rigorous protocols to protect patients and staff.

Any move toward reuse and reprocessing must be developed in partnership with them, not around them.

The balance between sustainability and safety is non-negotiable. Circularity can’t come at the cost of clinical outcomes. 

Real-World Evidence: It’s Already Happening

Some manufacturers are already proving circularity can scale: 

• Novo Nordisk’s PenCycle Program
  In 2021, the Danish pharmaceutical company launched a take-back scheme for its prefilled insulin pens in the UK. By 2023, more than 200,000 pens had been returned, achieving a 20–23% return rate in pilot areas. Up to 85% of recovered material is now recycled into furniture and other items.

This is a critical proof point in a sector that urgently needs alternatives. Globally, around 1.7 billion self-injection pens are manufactured each year, driven by rising prevalence of diabetes and the explosive growth of GLP-1 weight loss drugs. The market for injection pens is projected to exceed $60 billion by 2030, more than doubling in less than a decade.

This growth is fuelling a surge in single-use injector production, and accelerating the environmental burden. If even a fraction of this volume could be recaptured through circular models, the impact would be transformative. PenCycle shows that it’s not only possible, but already happening.  

• CPI & Owen Mumford’s ReSCiD Project
  A UK-funded collaboration between Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) and Owen Mumford is currently evaluating remanufacturing for drug-delivery devices. Initial models suggest up to 95% carbon reduction for reprocessed injectors, demonstrating both feasibility and environmental impact at scale.

The proof is already in circulation.

While the UK may be first with a medtech-specific circular roadmap, it’s not alone in ambition: 

• The EU Green Deal is pushing extended producer responsibility (EPR) and circular design for all plastic-containing products, including medical devices. 

• In the United States, leading healthcare providers are piloting sterilisation and reuse programs for surgical equipment, driven by both cost and sustainability imperatives. 

• Globally, pressure is growing from investors demanding ESG-aligned strategies, particularly in high-waste sectors like healthcare. 

What MedTech Leaders Should Be Doing Now

This strategy will challenge your portfolio, your commercial assumptions, and your supply chain.

The companies that adapt fastest will take share. The ones that hesitate will fall behind. 

This is what MedTech leaders should be doing now: 

• Audit your portfolio. Identify your most waste-intensive, single-use products. Be honest. 

• Pressure test your pipeline. What reusable or service-based offerings could you accelerate? 

• Develop a circular roadmap. Map out take-back, reprocessing, or leasing pilots – now. 

• Revise your business model. Revisit pricing structures that rely on volume over value. 

• Shift R&D culture. Teach your product teams that disposability is no longer neutral, it’s a liability. 

Most importantly: treat circularity as a strategic advantage, not a compliance burden. 

The Risk of Poor Communication

If Design for Life fails, it won’t be for lack of ambition. It’ll be for lack of industry alignment.

DHSC must communicate clearly and early. Industry must be involved in shaping delivery, not reacting to it.

The NHS supply chain is global. Circularity depends on manufacturers in the UK, EU, US, and beyond.

Mixed signals, unclear incentives, or silent policymaking will stall momentum. 

This has to be a coordinated effort. Behind-closed-doors policymaking won’t cut it.

The NHS cannot deliver this transformation without critical mass from the private sector. 

The Opportunity for MedTech

This shift creates serious upside.

MedTech companies that move early can lead in a new category of high-performance, reusable technology.

Investors will back businesses aligned with sustainability and resilience mandates.

Entire ecosystems could emerge, local reprocessing hubs, service-based sterilisation infrastructure, remanufacturing centres, and new digital tracking platforms. 

There are also opportunities for hospital innovation, public-private partnerships, and new standards of clinical performance.

Of course, it’s still early. Hard ROI numbers and scalable P&L impact are difficult to prove at this stage.

Circularity in healthcare is still emerging, but early signals are promising.
Global players like Novo Nordisk are already piloting take-back and reuse schemes across Europe, betting on future value and regulatory alignment. That alone tells us this isn’t just an ethical imperative, it’s a commercial one. 

For once, this isn’t about compliance for its own sake. It’s about reshaping a system that desperately needs to evolve. And for MedTech companies ready to lead, the UK just opened the door.