Ensuring that staff understand the urgency of the climate crisis and support our net zero programme is crucial if we want to be successful in reaching our goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2031. Our patients must be kept informed of changes and we must work closely with other NHS organisations, including NHS England, if we are to deliver a successful programme.  

To achieve this, we will:  

• Embed sustainability objectives into divisional governance structures 

• Promote smaller, but more visible, team-based projects  

• Ensure our staff and patients are kept informed of net zero progress, educated on sustainability matters, and know how they can get involved 

• Harness the people power of our Sustainability Network and Sustainability Leads role

 • Build sustainability into business-as-usual practices 

• Engage with stakeholders beyond our staff, including other NHS organisations. 

 

UCLH has funded the planting of hundreds of thousands of trees since switching its default search engine on work computers to Ecosia.

Ecosia is a free-to-use search engine that uses around 80 per cent of its profits to fund tree planting projects around the world, with over 170 million trees planted so far. When UCLH switched to Ecosia on Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge in February 2022, it had funded 600 trees by the end of the first week. 

The project was started by UCLH Sustainability Champions and completed with the support of UCLH colleagues within the digital, transformation, and communications teams. Although implementing Ecosia was a small change, it has had a wide-reaching impact, with several other NHS trusts now making a similar switch. 

 

 

UCLH's network of sustainability champions share our passion to be a more sustainable healthcare organisation. Their role is to help other colleagues adopt more environmentally sustainable practices both at work and at home.  

UCLH sustainability champions: 

• are a ‘port of call’ on sustainability in their department 

• support colleagues to learn about the sustainability agenda, our green plan and other environmental policies 

• identify potential improvements which would result in more sustainable practice, either locally or trust wide 

• exchange ideas, updates, resources and support with other champions 

• promote sustainability initiatives and general awareness at UCLH. 

There are now additional champion roles that allow staff to focus on a specific niche they are passionate about: energy, food, communications, training, reduce reuse recycle champions. 

Sustainability champions meet regularly to hear updates from the sustainability team, learn more about priority projects and share best practice. As of January 2023, there were 231 sustainability champions across UCLH: we are aiming to have one champion in every department.