Friday 15-02-2019 - 11:41

Birmingham Women's and Children's Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust joined in the summer of 2018 and are now part of our Green Impact for Health community of NHS Trusts, GP surgeries and dentists. 

Both Trusts kicked off their Green Impact year at their Sustainability Garden party in the summer with help from their sustainability champions they already have across the trust. They incentivised people to sign up to the programme with a prize draw for anyone who registered their interest in joining, which worked really well!

At the women's hospital they held a mini launch event where they spoke to staff about the things they were most passionate about across the Trust in terms of sustainability, this started lots of great conversations and got everyone excited about joining Green Impact.

30 teams have now been recruited with 15 from each trust and are being supported by Fran Silcocks, Sustainability Lead at both NHS Trusts who gives face to face support for many of the teams to help them get started with the toolkit. Fran is being supported by the University of Birmingham where a geography student is volunteering a few hours each week to help create resources and support the teams.

We have worked with the Trusts to create a unique scoring system to encourage people to just get going! Offering a getting started award, as well as a working towards bronze award, in addition to the standard bronze, silver and gold awards has really helped staff to start ticking off the actions to get them started on their sustainability journey! 

We'll keep on sharing how each of our NHS Trusts are progressing with Green Impact throughout the year and if you're interested in hearing more about Green Impact for Health please emails sustainability@nus.org.uk