At UMC Utrecht, the Watercare project shows that high-quality patient care and responsible water use go hand in hand. What began as a practical effort on the dialysis department has grown into a broader collaboration between healthcare professionals, researchers, and social designers working toward a more circular approach to water in hospitals.
Led by nephrologist Karin Gerritsen, the Green Team Dialysis is working to make water use more conscious, measurable, and circular. Their efforts focus on reducing water consumption, limiting unnecessary waste, and finding ways to reuse relatively clean water streams. This is particularly important in dialysis care, one of the most water-intensive treatments in the hospital. According to i4CS, the dialysis department uses around 50,000 liters of water each week, while the March 2026 feature notes that the ward uses roughly the equivalent of an Olympic swimming pool of water per year.
The project also demonstrates that meaningful sustainability gains can come from practical improvements in daily care. Measurements on the dialysis ward have already led to simple but effective interventions, including protocol changes and system optimization that reduce unnecessary water use. i4CS reports that water waste has already been reduced significantly and that the remaining relatively clean reject water is suitable for reuse in applications such as toilet flushing, window cleaning, and watering plants.
A major next step is already built into the future of the department. Both i4CS sources describe plans for a greywater reuse system in the redevelopment of UMC Utrecht’s dialysis department, allowing part of the currently discarded clean water stream to be captured and reused. The research page states that half of this water could be reused in the new building, marking an important step from isolated interventions toward structural, long-term sustainability in healthcare infrastructure.
Guus Crooijmans (Dialysis nurse) as water caretaker.
What makes Watercare especially powerful is its interdisciplinary approach. In collaboration with Joes Janmaat of Studio Sociaal Centraal and the Institute 4 a Circular Society (i4CS), the project combines clinical research with social design. i4CS describes this work as part of the transition toward a Circular Safe Hospital, using creative methods and installations to make water use more visible, tangible, and open for discussion inside and outside the hospital.
The idea behind Watercare is simple but powerful: if hospitals care for people, it is only logical that they also care for water. i4CS notes that the term builds on language developed by KWR Water Research Institute and helps give a shared identity to the work underway at UMC Utrecht. That combination of practical change, shared language, and public visibility is helping accelerate awareness and inspiring interest well beyond a single department.
Watercare is increasingly being recognized as an example of how sustainability in healthcare can move from ambition to action — through measurement, collaboration, design, and long-term system change.
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