Raising awareness for Greener AHP Week 2025

The third annual Greener Allied Health Professionals (AHPs) week took place from Monday 31 March to Friday 4 April. There is strong support from AHP staff to tackle the climate change crisis, with a focus on promoting the week and raising awareness of the links between health and climate change.

The NHS is responsible for 5% of all UK emissions. Every aspect of healthcare delivery, from the production and disposal of equipment used, to the energy used in the settings we work in, to the travel for our patients and staff, contributes to carbon emissions. By addressing these areas, we can significantly reduce our carbon footprint and move towards a more sustainable healthcare system.

The ‘Allied Health Professions strategy for England: AHPs Deliver’ emphasises integrating net zero practices into all AHP work and details how AHPs play an important role in delivering a Net Zero NHS.

Chief AHP Katie Puplett said: “Our Trust AHPs have been actively promoting Greener AHP week with key messages and information shared in meetings they have attended. They are committed to the Trust’s social responsibility and sustainability strategy and are already working in pre-determined geographical areas to reduce travel, using remote appointments, being paper free or paper light, recycling some equipment and utilising recycling bins throughout the trust, sharing cars and working agilely.

“Many of our AHPs have also taken advantage of the current offers on electric cars and are also taking part in the electric bike scheme that has been initiated by the trust. We take advantage of the national celebration of Greener AHP Week to showcase and promote greener AHP activities and our community teams are delivering care closer to home to prevent hospital admission.

“Our catering dietitians have been working on the trust’s agenda around reducing food waste and have been integral in our successful ambition to remove all single use plastics from catering areas.”

Many AHP models of care are designed to help people to stay well in their home and prevent costly hospital admissions or interventions e.g. the podiatry trying preventing the need for orthopaedic surgery by providing good quality care in the community. Our current and future priority areas include:

• Workforce (understanding and competencies) and use of resources:
  • Further training e.g. carbon literacy
  • Ensure the promotion of green practice remains on people’s agendas through team meetings and encourage teams to recycle, reuse, save energy and report faults with appliances and heating, take advantage of the trust’s electric transport and cycle to work schemes and ensure digital equipment is maintained and updated
  • When procuring items and services, include looking at ‘green credentials’ of suppliers
  • Look at desk availability as this could reduce travel back to bases and consider a satellite store for equipment so less travel to and from supplier
• Models of care:
  • Explore secure systems for sharing information to avoid printing
  • Encourage greener activities as part of treatment and increase outdoor spaces for working to reduce energy use indoors
  • Evaluate AHP models of care to showcase how they avoid hospital admissions and more expensive interventions