Femtech's Untold Climate Impact Story: Opportunities for Growth and Investment

During Climate Action Week, industries around the world highlight their sustainability initiatives with carbon offsets or renewable energy commitments. Yet one sector quietly delivers enormous climate benefits without recognition: femtech. Many companies are already reducing healthcare’s carbon footprint, preventing waste, and building climate resilience, but most never measure or communicate this impact.

This isn’t just a marketing oversight. It’s a missed opportunity to attract investment, form strategic partnerships, and position companies for long-term growth. In a recent post, we explored why femtech is central to climate resilience. Today, we look at the economic and strategic opportunity for brands that claim their climate impact.

The Hidden Environmental Value of Femtech

Healthcare accounts for nearly 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, with women’s reproductive and maternal health contributing a meaningful portion through facility usage, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and patient transportation. Every innovation that improves efficiency, reduces unnecessary procedures, or replaces single-use products is directly reducing the sector’s environmental footprint.

Consider telemedicine: platforms like Maven Clinic serve over 15 million women virtually, eliminating roughly 45 million miles of patient travel — equivalent to removing 9,000 cars from the road for a year.

At-home testing services, such as Modern Fertility and Everlywell, prevent millions of clinic visits, saving thousands of pounds of CO₂ annually.

Digital therapeutics, including Glow and Clue, have helped prevent nearly 900,000 unplanned pregnancies, avoiding tens of thousands of tons of lifetime CO₂ emissions.

Even preventive care solutions, like early detection interventions, reduce the need for resource-intensive emergency treatments, amplifying both health and environmental impact.

These benefits are real, measurable, and embedded in the business models of femtech innovators. Yet most of these companies never tell this story.

Why the Story Remains Untold

The reasons femtech companies hesitate to communicate climate impact are understandable. Founders often come from healthcare, technology, or business backgrounds and may not link health outcomes to environmental science. Many assume customers care only about health, though research shows that two-thirds of women aged 18–45 consider a company’s environmental stance when making healthcare decisions.

Measurement is also a challenge. Unlike solar panels with clear kilowatt-hour generation, femtech’s environmental benefits are often indirect and complex to calculate. How do you quantify the carbon impact of improved maternal health outcomes? What’s the environmental value of early disease detection, preventive care, or reduced clinic visits? These indirect but significant impacts can be difficult to translate into metrics that resonate with investors, customers, or the media.

Traditional investment categories also separate femtech from climate tech, leaving companies unsure how to position themselves. The result is a strategic visibility gap, one that limits funding, partnerships, and growth opportunities.

Why Climate Positioning Drives Growth

Femtech companies that articulate their environmental impact can create measurable economic value. Brands that connect health and climate outcomes differentiate themselves in crowded markets and attract investors who increasingly value ESG-aligned returns.

Customer demand also rewards climate-aware positioning; millennials and Gen Z are particularly likely to choose healthcare products from environmentally responsible companies. Governments and healthcare systems are integrating sustainability into procurement, meaning climate-aligned companies have access to premium partnerships.

In other industries, first movers who owned their environmental story achieved outsized returns. Tesla positioned itself as a climate solution, not just a car company, enabling policy support, premium pricing, and cultural recognition. Beyond Meat built a $7.4 billion market category by centering environmental impact in its value proposition. Femtech can do the same by translating health innovation into climate leadership.

Beyond Greenwashing: Authentic Climate Leadership

The solution isn’t simply adding environmental messaging to existing health-focused communications. For many femtech companies, environmental leadership is already core to their business model—they just haven’t articulated it. Authentic climate leadership means showing the real impact of your work without overstating or simplifying it.

Start with Systems Thinking: Frame women’s health and environmental health as interconnected systems rather than separate issues. When women’s health improves, communities become more resilient to climate impacts. When environmental conditions improve, women’s health outcomes improve.

Lead with Data: Calculate and communicate specific environmental impact metrics. How many tons of waste have you prevented? How many miles of travel saved? How much healthcare resource consumption has been reduced?

Connect to Larger Narratives: Position femtech innovation within broader climate and social stories. How does improved maternal health contribute to community climate resilience? How does preventive care reduce healthcare’s environmental footprint?

Address the Urgency: Climate change is actively worsening women’s health outcomes. Femtech solutions aren’t just beneficial—they’re urgent responses to accelerating challenges. Brands that communicate this urgency position themselves as both socially and environmentally essential.

Making Climate Impact Visible

Communicating measurable environmental benefits clearly allows femtech brands to position themselves as climate leaders. This isn’t just about words — it’s about showing impact through visuals, design, and storytelling that reinforce your mission. Brands can integrate environmental metrics alongside health KPIs in marketing, product packaging, and website design, creating a cohesive narrative that demonstrates the connection between women’s health and climate outcomes.

For example, Hoopsy partnered with Alfa Charlie to rebrand and launch a new website that highlights their eco-friendly approach to pregnancy testing. Through thoughtful visuals and messaging, Hoopsy brings their climate impact forward as a core part of their brand story.

By pairing data with visual storytelling, femtech companies can make their climate leadership visible, authentic, and memorable. This approach resonates with investors, partners, and customers alike, demonstrating impact in ways that numbers alone cannot.

The Risk of Waiting

Climate consciousness in healthcare is happening now. Investors, customers, and partners are making decisions based on environmental performance. Femtech companies that wait risk competing for attention in a crowded field rather than defining the market. Those that establish authentic climate leadership today build competitive advantages that will be difficult for later entrants to replicate.

Unlike sectors retrofitting sustainability into existing business models, femtech companies inherently deliver climate benefits through their core operations. This authenticity is increasingly valuable as stakeholders become more sophisticated about distinguishing genuine leadership from greenwashing.

Claiming the Opportunity

Femtech companies that claim their climate leadership today are positioning themselves for growth and long-term success. Investors are increasingly attentive to environmental value, customers reward brands aligned with their values, and strategic partners look for collaborators who understand both health and climate intersections. Those who move first will not only define the narrative but also create competitive advantages that are difficult to replicate.

At Alfa Charlie, we help femtech brands make their invisible impact visible, connecting health outcomes to climate outcomes and unlocking the strategic opportunities that come with authentic positioning. The impact is already happening. It is time to tell the story.