Surveys show support for green ‘activities’

As HEJ editor Jonathan Baillie reports, the new document also presents updated data on the ‘size’ of the carbon footprint of the NHS in England, showing that, although good work by a number of Trusts in the past two years has seen healthcare-generated carbon emissions start to ‘level off’, the biggest contributors have been the current health service spending review, and the increased national availability of renewable energy.

Just over a year ago (HEJ – April 2011), the NHS Sustainable Development Unit (NHS SDU) launched, at London’s famous Barts Hospital, its Route Map for Sustainable Health, a guidance document on sustainability in healthcare, in which it made clear the considerable challenge faced by the NHS in England in meeting tough EU and Government-imposed environmental targets over the next two decades. The Route Map, to which 70 public and private sector organisations contributed expert input, offered pointers and guidance on how organisations directly and indirectly involved in healthcare could take actions – many simple and relatively low-cost – that would contribute effectively to a more ‘sustainable’ healthcare system. In mid-January this year, the NHS SDU held a ‘follow-up’ workshop at one of the London offices of PricewaterhouseCoopers, the second to be staged since the Route Map’s launch. Here around 75 delegates from estates and facilities, clinical, and other key healthcare functions, alongside representatives from influential bodies such as the Department of Health, NICE, and the Carbon Trust, discussed progress to date, shared lessons learned, sought to identify to what extent their counterparts were actually using the Route Map as a template for action, and pledged a range of actions going forward. At the workshop, NHS SDU director, David Pencheon OBE, and Ben Page, chief executive at Ipsos MORI, one of two research companies to contribute significantly to the new Health Check 2012 publication (in its case presenting a summary of the results of its research into public perceptions), both referred enthusiastically to the latest SDU publication. Ben Page highlighted a number of key statistics from the at that stage unpublished report to whet the audience’s appetite as part of a fascinating presentation in which he also gave a few of his own pointers on effective ways to embed sustainability into the culture of a large, complex, and multifaceted organisation such as a typical acute NHS Trust.

Impassioned foreword