What is the carbon footprint of an orthopaedic implant?

Titanium alloy, cobalt chrome or stainless steel bar is a large part, because machining removes much of it and titanium takes a lot of energy to make. Add CNC and polishing electricity, cleaning, sterilisation and packaging per implant. Weigh bar bought, not the finished part.

Inputs

• Bar or forging weight per implant.
• Supplier figure per kg of alloy.
• Electricity for machining and finishing.
• Sterilisation and packaging.

Turnings

Titanium turnings sold for recycling leave with your waste. Keep the bar bought in full in your figure.

What Senseible does here

Senseible reads your electricity bills, fuel invoices and purchase invoices into dated, fingerprinted records, so a per unit footprint can be traced back to the documents behind it. Estimates are labelled as estimates.

• Forged crankshaft footprint
• Disposable syringe footprint
• Product carbon footprint calculator

Sources: GHG Protocol Product Standard, ISO 14067:2018, Carbon footprint of products (iso.org), GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard

Last reviewed 2026-10-22.