How green are you really?

With Clean Air Day having just taken place on 20 June and with the NHS being the heaviest public sector contributor to climate change, it seems prudent to ponder what the NHS, and ambulance services in particular, can do to reduce their carbon footprint.

Encouragingly, carbon emissions from the NHS, public health and social care systems have reduced by 19% since 2007 despite activity increasing by 27%. However, targets are ambitious, with a goal to cut emissions by 34% by 2020, 51% by 2025, and 80% (using 1990 as a baseline) by 2050.

Needless to say, we have a long way to go and ambulance services face the unique challenge of being a part of the NHS that relies on vehicular transport to fufil its role. As is noted in an informative literature review on scoping ambulance service emissions on page 305 of the current issue of the Journal of Paramedic Practice (p. 305), vehicle fuel represents 80% of the NHS energy burden. The review suggests several organisational and even individual-level strategies to help reduce emissions, save money for the NHS and, importantly, improve public health. Preceding this on p. 302 is a comment outlining the Quality Standard from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) on the impact of outdoor air quality and road-traffic-related air pollution on health, and the relevance of this to ambulance service.