The Role of IPC in Sustainable Healthcare: Fighting Climate Change from the Frontline
Blog by Graham Pike, IPS Sustainability SIG Coordinator
We are fast approaching Earth Day on 22 April, an annual international event which has occurred since 1970 with the aim of demonstrating support for protecting the environment.
Sadly, the truth is that we’ve not done brilliantly at protecting it in that time. Since 1970, wildlife populations have dropped by 73% according to the Zoological Society of London’s Living Planet Index. The Global Footprint Network in Geneva reports that in 1970 we were annually consuming one Earth’s worth of ecological resources (e.g. crops, livestock and fish products, soil, timber and other forest products). That has now risen to 1.7 Earths.
That means that, by about the end of July each year, we use up what the Earth can produce in 12 months. That clearly cannot continue forever! Eventually we will have no alternative but to consume less, since we will have exhausted the Earth’s resources. It would almost certainly be an easier transition if we start trying to live sustainably before that happens. We are damaging the Earth’s ability to sustain us as a species, and that’s obviously not a great long-term strategy.
A related way n which we are causing that damage is the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) we are putting into the atmosphere. Essentially CO2 is a waste product from a lot of human activity and whilst the planet is great at absorbing it, it can only deal with so much (even less as we reduce the amount of vegetation on the planet). As data from NASA show, CO2 has varied naturally between about 180 and 300 parts per million (ppm) over the last 800,000 years – with the lower periods corresponding with ice ages and the higher periods being the “interglacials”. It is currently at 427ppm, so more than 40% higher than it has been for the entirety of the existence of our species.
Why does the level of CO2 matter? The planet is in a constant balancing act between the sun heating it up, and the coldness of space surrounding it causing it to cool. CO2 tips that balance by slowing down the heat leaving the planet. The more CO2, the slower the heat leaves and the warmer we get. And the numbers are huge! Richard Allan, Professor of Climate Science at the University of Reading, has calculated that at the beginning of 2023, Earth was heating at a rate equivalent to all 8 billion people alive each using 60 kettles to boil up the ocean. Eliot Jacobson, retired Professor of Mathematics at Ohio University, uses a different analogy: all those kettles are the equivalent of exploding 16 atomic bombs every second. That comes with consequences!
Not least among the consequences are those for human health. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the USA describes how the changing climate will impact on every aspect of human health: communicable diseases (vector, food and waterborne), non-communicable diseases, physical injuries and mental health. It will also exacerbate wealth inequalities, and we know from COVID that wealth and health inequalities are very closely linked.
But of course healthcare has a carbon footprint, so is itself part of the problem. We’re creating our own patients, effectively. Our footprint isn’t small either, it’s more than twice that of the aviation industry, sitting at around 4.5% of global emissions. And this is where IPC practitioners can really have an impact. How much of what is done in healthcare, and the way it is done (e.g. the products used, the waste generated, the way things are decontaminated) is driven by a perception of a risk of infection? A huge proportion, I would say. But how often is real IPC expertise, rather than ritual or dogma, what drives the response to that risk? Not often enough! With IPC expertise, and our experience of assessing and balancing risks, we can be the ones identifying where change can happen, where we can reduce what we use, where we can move to reusable versions, where we can choose products that will have less impact on the planet we all depend on.
Below are just a few examples of projects led by IPC practitioners around the UK:
- Trials of reusable incontinence products in care home settings
- Reducing the use of couch roll
- Reducing the frequency of routine sheet changing in hospital
- Cannulation reduction
- Reducing unnecessary glove use
- Rationalising when skin prep is needed for venepuncture
- Patching chairs and couches rather than condemning them
- Optimising waste streams
- Trialling reusable curtains
- Implementing reusable theatre hats, gowns and drapes
- Moving to less toxic disinfectants
- Moving to less toxic hand sanitisers
- Trials of reusable aprons
- Trials of reusable anaesthetic masks
There are many, many more! We are key stakeholders in so much of healthcare, and thus we can either be barriers or enablers when change is required. Change has never been needed more, or more urgently, than it is now. So if you haven’t already, seek out your organisation’s sustainability officer, talk to your clinical teams about how they can make their practice more sustainable, and be the change agent that allows that to happen.
A final tip if wondering where to start. Have a look in your bins! What is taking up most space? Could it be used less? Is there a reusable alternative? We’ve never seen a net-zero healthcare system before, so there isn’t a road map for this. It’s going to need ideas from everybody: ground up, top down, and everyone in between.
If not you, who? If not now, when?
