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To support CSH’s work cutting carbon emissions and encouraging greening activities in hospitals - we are setting up an annual Sustainable Hospitals Award.
Last year, CSH successfully ran the Health strand of the 10:10 campaign by recruiting over 170 organisations in the health sector including 25 NHS acute trusts, 11 mental health trusts, 32 primary care trusts, and 29 GP surgeries. We worked alongside many of these organisations to encourage and support their in-house carbon cutting initiatives, and also coordinated health bodies joining in 10:10’s wider actions – such as 10:10:10, and developed our own tailored resources such as 10:10 health sector checklists and ‘carbon addict’: http://www.carbonaddict.org/
How will this programme help?
The Sustainable Hospitals Programme will build on this work, by measuring progress on cutting carbon with a standard ‘basket’ of metrics and encouraging hospitals to cut their carbon footprints further. It will measure carbon data alongside some other metrics on sustainability (such as water usage, staff transport modes, etc) and rank the hospitals in a competition to see who can be the most Green. At the end of 2012 the hospitals will calculate their new footprints and the project awards will be made at a ceremony in 2013. This will be repeated annually, and will have a definite, long-lasting positive effect on NHS hospitals cutting their carbon footprint, spreading the idea among many of the NHS’s 1.3 million staff.
The publicity around the Sustainable Hospitals Programme will highlight best practice in cutting CO2 in healthcare, encouraging others to share the ideas and engage in sustainability. It also aims to build on the 10:10 campaign’s approach – encouraging and celebrating carbon reduction strategies and actions.
IMPACT
There are existing awards to celebrate outstanding achievements in sustainability within other Award schemes but there are no dedicated programmes. The establishment of an annual Sustainable Hospitals Award programme will also differ from the current awards in that it will establish a fixed set of criteria by which the hospitals can be judged so that it makes it more objective and easier to progress over time.
There will be a group of at least 20 hospitals signed up to the programme for the first year, and 30 in the second year, via CSH’s established 10:10 Health networks. These hospitals will be aware of their base carbon footprint and related sustainability metrics. They will develop plans for interventions to cut CO2 and will measure their ongoing improvement.
1. CSH will provide resources to the hospitals that sign up to help them to reduce their carbon. Some of these have already been developed via 10:10 Health.
2. CSH will measure the ongoing impact of this work via the number of hospitals signed up and the amount of carbon they are cutting as well as other measures of improvement on the sustainability index.
3. CSH will measure the publicity generated by this Award in the media by monitoring the number of stories published, hits on the web pages and number of followers on twitter.
Contact: Rachel Stancliffe – Director, The Centre for Sustainable Healthcare, Cranbrook House, Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2, Rachel.stancliffe@sustainablehealthcare.org.uk
CSH is registered as a company limited by guarantee in England & Wales number 07450026. We are in the process of registering as a charity at the Charity Commission, with objects that include: ‘The conservation, protection and enhancement of the physical and natural environment by the prudent use of natural resources for the public benefit.'