As a medical practice, we were inspired to implement a number of changes to reduce our carbon footprint, after reading the NHS Green Plan.

We agreed, as a team, to introduce some simple changes to the way we run our practice and help reduce medication wastage, which would help us to become a greener practice.

The NHS Green Plan was created to support the publication of the Delivering a ‘Net Zero’ National Health Service report. The report is a comprehensive publication that provides a national-level framework for action on climate change and sustainability and states that ‘every NHS organisation has an essential role to play in meeting this ambition’. The NHS Green Plan outlines how NHS organisations can produce a ‘three year strategy towards net zero’, offering key areas of focus and some of the main sources of carbon emissions within the NHS as a starting point.

As a medical practice team, we are also keen to involve our patients in thinking of new ways of making greener decisions. We serve a patient population of over 15,000 patients and we welcome ideas from patients on how we can all help to reduce our carbon footprint. The Greener Practice, which is the UK's primary care sustainability network, has produced some useful information, which can be found here.

In November 2024, as a result of our hard work, we were proud to be awarded the Green Impact for Health Bronze Award. This was made possible by working with our patients to reduce the amount of medication wastage by the work we have done so far.