Positively Green

A very merry Christmas to all our blog readers! As the year draws to a close, the Sustainability team have been reflecting on what happened in 2025 and what our plans for 2026 and beyond will be…

In the latter part of 2025, we said goodbye to Choosing Greener and hello to Green Impact. Since 2022, we have worked with Team Jump to bring UHP Choosing Greener, a staff sustainable behaviours app. In that time,1059 UHP staff members have joined Choosing Greener and collectively they completed 30,881 actions. Just this year the actions completed by our members have avoided 88,385kg CO₂ and saved 144,294kWh of electricity!

We’ve so enjoyed watching our Choosing Greener members engaging with the seasonal and long-standing activities on the app. We’re certain the sustainable habits picked up through Choosing Greener will remain a firm fixture of our members’ lifestyles (even without the voucher incentives and email reminders!). A big thank you to everyone who took part in our Team Jump era- we hope you enjoy Green Impact just as much.

September 2025 saw the launch of Green Impact at UHP, a sustainability accreditation programme for staff and students that rewards sustainable action within departments and teams. We have well and truly smashed our target of 18 team sign ups as our current tally comes in at 23 teams, and we’re excited to support these teams to carry out carbon saving projects.

Elsewhere, we’ve loved working with a variety of teams on their sustainability projects including:

• The Infant Feeding Team and their campaign on the environmental benefits of breastfeeding

• Infection Control and their Gloves Off campaign

• Tavistock Hospital and their green team’s projects

• Theatres and their various projects to reduce single use plastics

• Pharmacy and their ongoing work on the RPS Green Pharmaceutical Toolkit

• The ED team and their Silver Royal College of Emergency Medicine Green ED submission

• The upcoming My Green Lab project being taken on by our Pathology Directorate in 2026

Many more! Have a read back through the blog to find out more details about the above.

We have also made progress in other areas of our Green Plan; In March we were awarded £1.2million towards energy efficiency projects and renewable energy following a bid put in by the sustainability team. This fantastic result will fund Sustainability projects around LED lighting, solar power and battery storage solutions across the Estate.

Biodiversity and Green Spaces got their fair share of attention with the help of Plymouth Environmental Action Group and Wilmott Dixon who have both helped to improve green spaces on site and increase biodiversity. We’re hoping to see the results of the wildflower planting next spring now that the seeds are down.

A massive thank you to all our Green Champions who engaged in any kind of sustainability work this year! We’re so grateful for all the effort that our eco-conscious colleagues do alongside their day to day roles to help UHP advance in its net zero ambitions. If you would like to get in touch, please do email us: plh-tr.sustainability@nhs.net