Comment / Environmental sustainability – playing our part

I’m feeling angry, anxious and confused. Is this the best time to start my first ever blog?  Businessman and author Stephen Covey advised to ‘begin with the end in mind’. I didn’t really know what a blog was, I am still learning, and my first lesson is to grab attention, connect, hold interest and offer something useful that might make people come back and eventually spread the word.

One way or another I have been involved with sustainability within the NHS since about 2011, when I stumbled into it. A friend at work asked me to give time to another friend, who was looking for people to interview about what the NHS was doing in the area of sustainability. A short interview then!

Yes, of course. And I offered my contact details. Sometime later, I was contacted, and the person came along, and I was surprised how much we were already doing in the NHS. I just had to think about it, or rather talk about it, and kick my brain cells into action. That’s only part of it – the interviewer was brilliant at his job – that’s what made the difference.  I remember feeling very positive and happy for a few moments, then it was over – forgotten.

Some months later, I received an invitation to St James’s Palace for tea and scones with Prince Charles. I thought it was a spoof at first, but eventually worked out that the interview had been on behalf of A4S, Prince Charles' accounting for sustainability charity.

I was way out of my depth, but enjoyed the occasion. Out of a sense of guilt or duty I wondered what I could do that even started to merit the reward I had already received for so little. And so, I approached Mark Knight at the HFMA and asked if he would support me in setting up an environmental section within the association. Mark had previously been supportive of my mad cap ideas and said yes.

The NHS has come a long way in terms of positive actions to reduce its carbon footprint since 2011 and the HFMA Environmental Sustainability Special Interest Group is now well established (see the HFMA’s latest round-up). The HFMA Awards last year, with its inaugural award for environmental sustainability, provided a fantastic showcase for some of the great work being taken forward across the country – and the roles that finance teams can play in this agenda.

Across the whole sector, there are some areas of real success. Scotland recently became the first country in the world to stop using the anaesthetic desflurane – a gas with global warming potential 2,500 times greater than carbon dioxide. And England will decommission its general use by early next year. We are doing okay, aren’t we?

So why the anger and confusion? What’s upsetting me?  Maybe it’s the growing awareness that there is so much more that can and must be done to have the necessary impact in terms of environmental sustainability? Maybe it’s seeing the big danger of focusing all our energy on recovering urgent and emergency care services and reducing the elective backlog? An incredibly difficult financial context for 2023/24 also raises a question over the funds available to push ahead on sustainability. It is probably all these things, and a fear that action won't be taken in time.

So, as a first step, I urge you to get involved with the HFMA Environmental Sustainability Special Interest Group. Especially when the NHS is going through another rough patch, it’s the generously given voluntary time and activities we all rely on to keep some of the most valuable programmes moving in the right direction. Taking personal responsibility and sharing freely is really at the heart of HFMA values and the essence of our membership organisation. Let’s be our best together.

Rod Smith is a former NHS finance manager, now retired, and member of the HFMA Environmental Sustainability Special Interest Group