3rd November 2010
Mid Essex Hospital’s Carbon Reduction Team reaches Final
The 2010 Health and Social Care Awards were hosted in Cambridge yesterday (2nd November) by the East of England Strategic Health Authority, with Mid Essex Hospitals Carbon Reduction Strategy entry reaching the final of the Sustainability in Care Award category.
The judges said: “This project showed an innovative example of setting an explicit baseline from which the Trust can measure their carbon footprint which will reduce the environmental impacts on their business.”
The Health and Social Care Awards are the annual flagship event for the Department of Health and are run in partnership with the national NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement and with Strategic Health Authorities.
In these times of change and financial difficulty the adoption and spread of innovation and best practice plays a more important role than ever before. With this in mind all applicants were asked to respond to at least one of the four core principles of Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention.
The Sustainability in Care Award recognises the commitment needed to achieve sustainability in the operations of health and social care, and achievement in other programmes aimed at combating climate change.
As part of the commitment to contribute to a more carbon-efficient healthcare system, Mid Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust became the first NHS body to comprehensively measure, understand and report on the environmental impacts of its operations and those of its supply chain. A committee of colleagues from throughout the organisation was established to help lead on carbon reduction and an environmental strategy was established.
A partnership was also established with Trucost, experts in the environmental research, to support the identification of impacts through a measurement programme for the financial year 2008/2009. This analysis provided a baseline environmental impact assessment of the Trust’s activities and also the carbon footprint of our supply chain.
Opportunities to address GHG (green house gas) emissions that contribute to climate change were highlighted, as well as identifying environmental “hotspots” and areas of environment-related regulatory risk, all providing opportunities for cost savings.
Paul Aitchison, Commercial Director, said:
“I am delighted that our Trust’s Carbon Reduction Strategy has been recognised by the EoE SHA and the awards panel, reducing our environmental impact is something everyone in the Trust can contribute to and something I strongly support.
“This is an extremely important piece of work that has meant that we are the first NHS body to comprehensively measure, understand and report on the environmental impacts of our operations and those of our supply chain. We can now take this forward and become one of the best performing NHS Trusts on this agenda.
“As a result of the report we have already identified the three environmental key performance indicators that have an impact on our operations and carbon footprint of our supply chain – green house gases, waste and water use. Last year we appointed a waste manager who has already started to work on initiatives to reduce the amount of waste that we produce.”
ENDS
Media contacts : Jo Triggs tel: (01245) 514235 | Mobile : 0790 005 4948
Out of Hours Media Calls : 0790 005 4948
Powered by EasySite™