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Care Without Carbon – our strategy

Created by the NHS, for the NHS, Care Without Carbon is a deceptively simple framework for delivering sustainable healthcare – cutting carbon, saving money and supporting workforce wellbeing. The first Care Without Carbon strategy ran from 2015 to 2020. Our new strategy takes us to 2025 and beyond to Net Zero Carbon by 2040.

Care Without Carbon

Developed by Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust, Care Without Carbon provides a multi-award-winning model, designed to meet national policy requirements on sustainability and carbon reduction in the NHS. The original model, framed around 7 elements has been updated and adapted to ensure we can meet our commitment to reach Net Zero Carbon by 2040.

This new Care Without Carbon strategy forms the Green Plan for our Trust – all NHS Trusts must have a Green Plan by January 2022 in line with NHSEI’s Greener NHS programme.

“As a trust we are always looking at ways of improving and doing things in a more sustainable way. The Care Without Carbon team has worked really hard to make being green part of the culture at our organisation”
Siobhan Melia, Chief Executive, Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust

Care Without Carbon tackles sustainable healthcare in a truly holistic and integrated approach, and we  work across the NHS, supporting Trusts and commissioners on their journey to becoming more sustainable.

How it works

A key aspect of our new strategy is the introduction of Sustainable Healthcare Principles. We developed these in detailed consultation with staff, inspired by the work of the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare who originated the idea of principles for sustainable healthcare.

Our Vision: Together we lead the way in Net Zero Carbon healthcare, protecting the environment on which our health depends.

Below is the new strategic framework, you can see we have evolved from 7 elements to 8 elements which now form workstreams for our Care Without Carbon team. These enable the team to support the wider Trust in embedding and delivering on the Sustainable Healthcare Principles.

Find out more

You can read the full Care Without Carbon strategy by downloading it here:

You can read the full Strategy Document here.

To find out what is happening to make the NHS more sustainable on a national level, take a look at the Greener NHS website.

We created a short animation for staff to share what we mean by sustainable healthcare.