Tell us about your sustainability schemes

Environmental and sustainability issues are important to the future development of BSW Integrated Care System and, as our recently published Green Plan points out, the climate emergency is a health emergency which requires our immediate attention.

There are a number of innovative projects underway across the BSW Integrated Care System to help reduce the environmental impact of our work and now a new initiative has seen BSW ICB host a chief sustainability officer clinical fellow for a year to help develop sustainability pilots within the BSW estates team.

We’ll be bringing you regular updates about these projects in future issues of #BSWTogether. In this issue, we start by meeting Angie Willis, our new chief sustainability officer clinical fellow, to find out more about her new role:

Please tell us about your background and what this new role involves:

I was previously a midwife at Great Western Hospital and a registered health visitor. I’ve got two daughters who have inspired my passion for sustainability and I’m really excited about starting this new role.

What will your new role involve?

I’m going to be working with the sustainability leads of each organisation across BSW. The aim of this year will be to increase collaboration across organisations with a focus on sustainability, alongside piloting sustainability tools in practice with the support of the Greener NHS team.

It’s really important that we all work together across BSW to get pilot schemes that can make a difference to our environmental impact off the ground, so I’d love to hear about any sustainability projects going on across BSW, or that colleagues would be interested in taking forward. You can get in touch with me at: angela.willis5@nhs.net

What projects are you looking at at the moment?

We are currently piloting a national tool to consider low carbon care models. Across the organisation, there are many amazing sustainability teams leading ongoing sustainability projects which will be shared with BSW together over the coming months.