Earth Day - Climate Change Experts Discussing the NHS, Webinar Round-Up
Earth Day is an annual event celebrated around the world. Climate change is threatening the pillars of sustainable health. “Climate change affects many of the social and environmental determinants of health – clean air, safe drinking water, sufficient food and secure shelter”. By committing to act on climate change and protect our resources we can help reverse and reduce the impact our activities have on the environment.
It is our mission to help tackle climate change and support the NHS in becoming the world’s first net-zero national health service. For this webinar, we invited a panel of climate change experts from around the globe to discuss the strategies that should be implemented within the NHS to support environmental protection.
Understanding the Role of Sustainability
Our event kicked off with Brendan Rouse an environmental officer at EMBL. Brendan has extensive experience working in sustainability and energy management for companies such as Landsec, CLS Holdings and Great Ormand Street Hospital. His passion for sustainability has seen him deliver a Net Zero Carbon Sustainability Strategy and a SKA gold certification. Brendan’s work at Great Ormond Street hospital delivered award-winning initiatives and contributed to the reduction of the trust’s scope 1 & 2 emissions by 24% over three years, savings the Trust over two million pounds from its utility spend.
Brendan shared with us three key learnings that he has learnt and applied throughout his 10 years working in sustainability.
The role of Sustainability
Selling Sustainability
Consultation
“The important thing is, as we are working within this organisation is that we listen to our colleagues, we understand what drives them, what motivates them, and we tailor our message to them”
Understanding the role of sustainability within your organisation is important whether this is logical, emotional or moral. “Today the environmental movement is huge. We are facing environmental catastrophes, and there are amazing organisations who are dedicated to tackling this, that's their purpose” Brendan also highlighted that there are organisations that are implementing sustainability for logical reasons such as gaining competitive advantages and responding to customer and stakeholder expectations.
When looking at sustainability within an organisation it is important to be aware and use this to your advantage. The main benefits of being a sustainable organisation as mentioned by Brendan is to create long term value through reducing operating costs, creating more effective resource managers, have effective economic social and environmental risk management and build loyalty with customers and their staff through dialogue and engagement.
“We have to be efficient in our cost so we can spend more on frontline services”
Health and Decarbonisation Strategies
Our Second Guest speaker was Sarah Daly a global sustainability strategist. Sarah has spent 20 years running her marketing and management consultancy where she veered into sustainability when realising things could be done differently.
Sarah has been a sustainability consultant across a wide range of sectors, one being the NHS. For this webinar, Sarah provided us with an insight into:
Decarbonisation within healthcare
The importance of low carbon healthcare
Healthy communities
Restorative health care systems.
Sarah highlighted the importance of implementing sustainable strategy’s that benefit the NHS as a whole. We need to be looking at the carbon lifetime of each purchase and that purchasing decisions consider long term value rather than best value.
“The co2 emissions from NHS England, are greater than the annual emissions from all aircraft departing from Heathrow Airport.”
Our activities impact our environment and affect our health. “18 million people are affected in the UK health-wise, through asthma and other conditions, heart disease and things which are caused by poor air quality” The NHS become the world’s first national health system to commit to carbon net-zero showing there moral obligation to stop being contributors to activities that are going to cause health care requirements.
“98% of NHS staff believes the health system should be environmentally sustainable”
Sarah also brought to our attention international strategies that have been implemented within healthcare settings in order to decarbonise estates through the use of green spaces. One of the examples was Boston Medical Centre who have created a rooftop farm. The rooftop farm has provided food for the hospital and assisted with patient rehabilitation especially for those with nutritional issues
However, as well as being green on the outside it is also important to bring the green in. Sarah’s work has found a correlation between staff performance and illness due to limited access to appropriate lighting, air quality and ventilation. Sarah created a calculator around returned sustainable investment (RSI) the results found that there was a correlation between performance and building design, ventilation and lighting.
“The NHS needs to drastically start moving from cure to prevention as a sort of underlying strategy to reducing its impacts”
Transforming Healthcare Through Leadership
Our third guest speaker was Mireia Figueras Alsius. Mireia is a climate officer at Health Care Without Harm Europe ( HCWH) with an industry background in environmental sciences in international relations. HCWH is a Non For Profit Organisation with 151 members across 33 European countries.
The members of HCWH are transforming the health sector and creating a sustainable future for people and the world through innovation, ingenuity, and investment. Hospitals, community centres, and other healthcare services, as well as health systems and government/regional health service providers, are currently eligible to join.
HCWH collaborates with stakeholders, partners, and other members to develop long-term healthcare solutions that can be scaled up across Europe and beyond. Safer Chemicals, Sustainable Food, Climate-smart Healthcare, Safer Pharma, and Sustainable Procurement are there five interconnected programme areas.
““Our mission is to transform healthcare so that it reduces its environmental footprint and becomes a leader in the global movement for health, environmental, health and justice””
For this webinar, Mireia provided us with information on HCWH Smart Healthcare Programme. The goal of the programme is that the European health care sector is transformed into a low carbon and climate-resilient sector that protects public health from climate change and accelerates the transition to a low carbon economy. The programme is built on three pillars leadership mitigation, and resilience.
“It’s a platform to exchange ideas collaborate and inspire climate action in hospitals across”
The Global Green and Healthy Hospitals (GGHH) is the world's first sustainable healthcare network, focusing on the concerns and needs of healthcare sustainability practitioners. GGHH membership is a way for you to rapidly accelerate your development toward being a truly sustainable organisation. Join there network
A Multifunctional Approach To Decarbonisation
Our final guest speakers were from the Climate Smart Forest Economy, Jamie Lawrence and Robyn van den Heuvel. The program aims to increase the use of climate-smart forest products by catalysing market demand from sectors that need rapid decarbonization while meeting social and ecological safeguards. For this webinar Jamie and Robyn covered:
An introduction to a climate-smart forest economy approach
Implications for the healthcare sector
A glimpse of the future: Breakthrough initiatives to demonstrate this potential
The aim of this programme is to generate and disseminate awareness, encourage and raise ambition among key public and private sector stakeholders, and promote initiatives that show how the Sink, Carbon Storage, and Fossil-Carbon Substitution (3S) roles of forests and forest products can be maximised for improved environment, social, and economic benefits.
This programme has received collaboration from Climate-KIC, The Nature Conservancy, The World Economic Forum, and the World Resources Institute
“Using healthcare sector as a key influence point to enter those communities, and start shifting broader behaviour change, and at the same time getting all those biophilic and other benefits”
When looking at a multifunctional approach to decarbonisation Jaimie highlighted the importance of getting the balance right and working across entire chains in a collaborative approach. The value of looking at the healthcare sector as a potential breakthrough initiative or demonstration project is not just the value in supporting but it's also recognising the healthcare sector as a key influence point for communities. Hospitals are a great example of community outreach and engagement. Healthcare, on the other hand, is one of the largest contributors to carbon pollution, and the global influence of climate change is having a negative impact on our health. Learn more here.
This webinar outlined the main environmental impacts and solutions for a greener NHS. Giving an understanding of how we can be a more sustainable organisation through collaboration, communication and contribution. By committing to act on climate change and protect our resources we can help reverse and reduce the impact our activities have on the environment and create a more healthier future for ourselves and the planet. Watch the full webinar here, if you would like more information please get in touch.