What We’re Doing to Help

We are working with medical students from the University of Sheffield to make changes at Green Cross so that we are more environmentally friendly. We are working through the Green Impact for Health Toolkit and have been awarded a silver award for our work!

Active travel

We encourage staff and patients to travel to the surgery by foot or bike rather than by car if possible. This is good for everyone’s health as well as being good for the environment. We have signed up to the Cycle to Work scheme to make it easier for staff to do this.

Recycling

We have installed recycling boxes at both our Palgrave site and Dunninc Road site for our staff to use.

Reducing unnecessary prescribing

Our pharmacists and GPs do regular medication reviews for our patients and we are encouraging all of them to ensure that we stop any medications that are no longer needed.

Inhalers

Some types of inhalers have a higher carbon footprint than others. Our nurses are discussing this with patients during their asthma and COPD reviews and switching patients inhalers when appropriate.

Reducing paper use

We are minimising the amount of paper letters we send, instead using phone calls, texts or emails.

Ecosia

We have switched our search engine to Ecosia which uses its income to plant trees.

Ecosia – the search engine that plants trees

Social prescribing

Social prescribing is when patients are referred to local community groups and activities that can improve their health by increasing their activity levels and reducing social isolation. There are lots of fantastic opportunities for this in Parson Cross and Shiregreen and we are encouraging all appropriate patients to get involved with this.

We’re also involved with Move More – A project that gets patients and staff to become more active!

We’re aiming for the gold award this year by: