We’ve been looking at how companies are doing their best to ‘go green.’ Today we’ll look at what measures the NHS are taking to become carbon neutral and reduce their carbon footprint.
The NHS is the largest employer in the UK and the third largest in the world! As you can imagine then it has a huge number of employees, has millions of visitors to its premises a year and has a vast number of properties. Some statistics we found estimate that the NHS has 1 million patient contacts every 36 hours!! With this in mind how are the NHS stepping up to the challenge of reducing their carbon emissions?
The think tank NEF (the new economics foundation) has written a report entitled ‘Taking the temperature: towards an NHS response to global warming.’ Whilst looking at how to reduce carbon emissions the report also looks at how a warmer climate and freak weather conditions, will affect the health of the population. The NHS must reach the targets set by the UK Energy white paper to reduce emissions by 20% by 2010 and by 60% by 2050.
Here are some statistics on the NHS carbon footprint as provided by the NHS Confederation:
- The NHS emits 1 million tonnes of carbon a year
- The NHS energy bills cost £400 million per year
- 5% of all UK emissions from road journeys can be attributed to NHS related journeys
- A total of 25 billion kilometers were travelled by those visiting, using or working for the NHS
- One in every 100 tonnes of domestic waste in the UK comes from the NHS
- Turning off computer screen (which generates 90 kilotonnes of CO2 a year)
- Recycling
- Improving building design in ways such as having proper insulation
- Having motion activated lights to eliminate the problem of lights being left on in rooms that are not used
