Welcome to 'Green Rabbits' the monthly newsletter from the Campaign for Greener Healthcare for an update on sustainable healthcare news, events, resources and our projects. The primary source of information about the Campaign, including an archive of these newsletters, is our website at www.greenerhealthcare.org.
CUT CARBON - SAVE JOBS
Faced with £20bn worth of 'efficiency savings' over the next five years there could not be a better time for the NHS to embrace significant cuts in energy consumption. Saving energy will save money and therefore jobs.
Managers faced with the difficult task of providing more care with less cash will surely find a workforce that is more motivated to reduce waste than ever before. Cutting carbon will save jobs and is clearly the right thing to do given the serious and dramatic impact on health services from climate change, rising energy prices and increasingly scarce resources. Read more here.
http://greenerhealthcare.org/blog/2010/06/cut-carbon-save-jobs
GREEN NEPHROLOGY APPEAL
Donations are urgently needed to save the world’s first sustainable clinical specialty programme! Green Nephrology has been a fantastic success this year - but unless funds can be found, the programme will have to close down in September 2010.
Read more here. Donate here!
[Bowl by Peter Morgan]
RCN ACTIVIST TRAINING - SUSTAINABLE ACTION PLANNING
Royal College of Nursing activists were heading home to “green” their wards after training sessions at the Joint Reps conference last week. Despite a festive conference dinner the night before, the activists were soon unpacking sustainability issues from their workplaces and coming up with ideas. Read more.
WHAT'S THE CARBON FOOTPRINT OF A HEART BYPASS OPERATION?
"If you want to go green, look after your health – a major operation compares to two short-haul flights." So says a recent blog on the Guardian website by Mike Berners-Lee.
"... a big operation clocks up a big footprint. The typical cost of a heart bypass to the UK's National Health Service is £6324. If we assume that this operation is averagely carbon intensive, it adds up to more than 1 tonne of CO2e. That's around a month's total emissions for the typical UK citizen – or a couple of return flights from London to Madrid." Read more here.
TOOLS & RESOURCES - MAPPING GREENER HEALTHCARE
In the last month the London NHS Travel Network has actively populated our website ‘Mapping Greener Healthcare’, adding 34 sustainable travel initiatives, bringing the total number of case studies on the website to 103. In this issue of our newsletter we would like to introduce a sustainable travel initiative implemented by NHS City & Hackney. NHS City and Hackney and NHS Tower Hamlets have set up a shared pool bike scheme with initially 4 bikes, 2 at each site to help staff, clinical and administrative, to commute between their two sites.
To read more, click here.
CARBON ADDICT SERIES - ACTIVE TRAVEL
Inspirational thinking from the healthcare community has combined the well-known benefits of exercise and fresh air in a new treatment modality: “Active Travel”. Instead of prescribing gym membership in combination with intermittent trips to the seaside, patients are encouraged to experiment with low-tech exercise modes (e.g. walking) – in the outdoors. The new treatment, effective in heart disease, COPD, depression, osteoporosis and obesity is causing consternation among pharma companies. Some are even suspected of moving into manufacture of pedometers, which have proved a useful adjunct and are now widely available on the NHS (see www.whi.org.uk).
www.carbonaddict.org/social-interventions-lifestyle
GOOD MONTH FOR ...
10:10 Health: Sign ups include The North West London Hospitals NHS Trust and the Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust
BAD MONTH FOR ...
Green policies sidelined in Budget, read more
EVENTS
CRC Energy Efficiency Summit, 6-7 July, London.
Carbon footprinting workshop, 6 July, Swansea
Energy Management workshop, 6 July, Manchester
Energy Management workshop, 7 July, Birmingha
Faculty of public health annual conference, 7 July, London
Carbon footprinting workshop, 7 July, Wrexham
Green Monday, 12 July, London
Energy Management Webinar, 13 July, Online
Low and Zero Carbon Healthcare Estates, 15 July, London
Energy Efficiency Scheme Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) surgery, 19 July, Leeds
Green Nephrology Summit, 24 September, Birmingham
10:10 MONTHLY THEME - EATING
What we eat typically represents about one quarter of our personal carbon footprint and of course it is also a major contributor to our health. Luckily a low carbon diet can be a healthy one too - including for the NHS! For lots of information and examples of good practice in hospital catering, read more here.
JOBS
As the Greener Healthcare Social Network Manager, you will nurture and support a peer to peer network which promotes sustainability within the NHS as part of the 2degrees network, which has over 6,500 members. Read more.
