The NHS was founded in 1948 to provide high-quality health care for all now, and for future generations. Understanding that climate change and human health are in-extricably linked, in October 2020, the NHS became the first in the world to commit to working towards becoming a carbon net zero national health system by 2045. This means improving healthcare while reducing harmful carbon emissions and investing in efforts that remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
With the NHS accounting for around 4% of the country’s carbon emissions and over 7% of the economy, the NHS has an essential role to play in meeting the car-bon net zero targets set under the Climate Change Act (Delivering a ‘Net Zero’ Na-tional Health Service).
Over 1.3 million people work in the Eng-lish NHS, making us the largest employer in Britain and in Europe. Together we can and should play a significant role in re-ducing our carbon footprint and limiting our impact on the environment in order to make a significant difference to the health of the population we serve.
Many of these positive changes have al-ready begun around us, with people tak-ing personal and workplace actions to reduce their environmental impact. The actions that we will take together covers a broad range of things like energy sources and efficiency, recycling, plastic waste reduction, reducing emissions from travel miles, improving green spaces with more trees, and updating logistics to minimise delivery miles and packaging.
The Greener NHS programme has begun to work with our staff, hospitals and part-ner organisations across Surrey. The na-tional programme will build on the great work being done by trusts across the country, sharing ideas on how to reduce impact on public health and the environ-ment, save money and thus achieve a car-bon net zero NHS.
To find out more visit www.england.nhs.uk/greenernhs