Green Team Competition

The Green Team Competition is an award-winning programme in sustainable healthcare that transforms expert knowledge into action. It empowers NHS and healthcare organisations to bring sustainability and healthcare together, to improve clinical outcomes, reduce organisational costs and become thought leaders in their journey toward net zero. 

• Cut Carbon to meet Net Zero targets
• Improve staff well-being
• Reduce Costs and Save Money. 
• Improve Patient Care. 

What is a Green Team Competition?

The Green Team Competition is an established and award winning leadership and engagement programme that brings together healthcare teams across the sector. The programme is designed to empower individual teams withing an organisation to create their own projects that deliver on cutting carbon, improving patient care and staff experience, reducing the costs of care delivery and making healthcare more sustainable, and mentors healthcare teams to develop, plan, run and measure the impacts of Sustainability in QI (SusQI) projects. The programme enhances staff capability in and motivation for SusQI and supports engagement with senior leads.

Why are Green Team Competitions important?

The Green Team Competition offers both bigger picture understanding and guides practical changes in sustainable healthcare – transforming knowledge into action. As a healthcare worker, you can directly influence, implement and measure changes in your daily practice, showing tangible benefits to net zero carbon, cost and care. As an organisation, you can empower your staff with the knowledge and skills needed to contribute to sustainable models of care, whilst receiving an impressive return on investment.

Why should you organise a Green Team Competition for your healthcare organisation?

Running a green team competition has a range of benefits for the individual team members involved, the organisation they work in, and for patients themselves. These include:

• Increased education and awareness, Healthcare staff need clear grounded information on why sustainability matters in their field and how they can contribute to it. The competition provides this education alongside tangible actions. Green Team projects vary widely, addressing many areas of green / decarbonation targets including workforce leadership, sustainable models of care, travel, supply chain and procurement, medications and food and nutrition.
• Meeting NHS green plan targets and complying with Net Zero legislation. Improvements made with green team competition innovations can help the NHS and other healthcare organisations meet their legislative and organisational carbon reduction requirements.
• Reducing spending and the cost of healthcare. Improvements implemented as a direct result of green team competition innovations can help reduce costs and save money. In 2022 alone, Green Team organisations saw an annual return on investment of over 200%.
• Better patient care. Some projects will improve the experience of care for patients in a wide variety of ways, from initiatives to help reduce waiting times to reducing the need and the drive for low value or unnecessary testing or procedures. Others may have direct clinical health benefits such as reducing risk of infection or reducing side effects of a treatment.
• Investment in staff well being and moral. Running a green team competition can bring a team together and improve well-being, job-satisfaction and staff morale. SusQI evaluation has shown that green team competitions have led to an increased paradigm of hope and empowerment, by giving teams concrete tools and information they need to make a real difference, which in turn improves clinical engagement in and motivation for sustainability and improvement work in healthcare.
• Personal Professional Development. Participants who take part in green team competitions can hone a range of soft and practical clinical skills that will help towards their professional development.
• Help build relationships and understanding between interdisciplinary teams. The green team competition enhances interdisciplinary relationships between clinical, non-clinical and senior leadership. Members of the organisation senior leadership join the judging panel at the showcase and awards event raising the profile of the team’s work.
• Help embed sustainability into Quality Improvement. All innovations learned and made during each green team competition can be scaled and improved upon. Quality Improvement teams often have significant input into the competitions, and the high-quality case studies developed can be used to disseminate learning and increase understanding of obstacles and how these may be overcome for others wanting to implement SusQI in your organisation

How does it work?

The Green Team Competition invites six teams from within your healthcare delivery organisation to engage in our mentoring programme and begin their journey toward improving Sustainability in Quality Improvement, ‘SusQI’, through a variety of projects.

Your teams will be led by experienced experts in healthcare, education and sustainability to increase understanding, implement positive change, and introduce a series of closely mentored practical projects that will generate high impact outcomes. 

All outcomes will be tracked and evidenced to document the positive impact on the environment, patient care and organisational costs, and each team will present their project in a ceremony designed to celebrate everyone’s achievements. 

Success stories

Over 20 NHS organisations have taken part in the green team competition since 2019, winning multiple awards and having a significant impact across the whole healthcare sector. 

How much does running a Green Team Competition cost? 

Each green team competition costs £23,000 excluding VAT to run.