Newcastle Trust ‘leads way’ on climate change action

Last summer  The Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, one of England’s largest acute teaching hospital Trusts, which reportedly operates more specialist services than any other, became the world’s first healthcare organisation to declare a Climate Emergency – a move backed by its Chief Executive and Board in response to climate experts’ warnings that at the current rate the world stands little chance of meeting the greenhouse gas reduction emission targets set out in the Paris Agreement of 2015. As HEJ’s editor, Jonathan Baillie, discovered when he spoke by phone with the head of Sustainability, James Dixon, the milestone was the latest step in over a decade’s work by the Trust to embed sustainability across its activities wherever, and whenever, possible.

The Trust’s concerted drive to operate more sustainably in a raft of different areas – from increasing the volume of non-clinical waste it recycles, and sending zero waste to landfill since 2011, to reducing its use of anaesthetic gases with a high Global Warming Potential (GWP) at its two acute hospitals in Newcastle – the Freeman Hospital and the Royal Victoria Infirmary – was highlighted at a packed IHEEM CPD regional seminar held on 30 January this year at St James’ Park, the home of Newcastle United FC. There, at an event kindly sponsored by Sharpsmart, a mixture of IHEEM members, other Trust personnel (joined by staff from other north-east England NHS Trusts), supplier representatives, architects, construction personnel, and senior university staff, heard from three speakers on some of the wide range of carbon-cutting initiatives taken by the Trust, Newcastle University, and local Passivhaus-certified architects – all playing their part in ensuring that large public sector bodies contribute effectively to helping the UK meet the stringent carbon emission reduction targets set out in the Paris Agreement and the Kyoto Protocol. Speaking at the event – attended on IHEEM’s behalf by the Institute’s Marketing & Events manager, Melissa Glass, and COO, Tania Davies – were James Dixon, Matt Dunlop, his counterpart as head of Sustainability at Newcastle University, and Mark Siddall, Principal at Durham-based ‘low energy architectural practice’, LEAP, which dubs itself ‘Northern England’s leading Passivhaus architect and low energy consultant’.

A milestone for a healthcare organisation