South Wales Low Vision Clinic is delighted to be signed up to the Greener Primary Care Wales Framework and Award Scheme and we are actively taking steps to reduce our carbon footprint. The climate emergency is also a health emergency. We therefore aim to enhance the health of our practice population and offer sustainable choices in how we operate and the services we offer to our patients. This will provide benefits to the NHS, your health, and the carbon footprint of healthcare.
Below are some of the things we have done and do daily to help make us a more sustainable Practice
- We remove all packaging from magnifiers we prescribe and recycle all the cardboard and soft plastics. See our blog post.
- We use an electronic records system so that we don’t have to print large amounts of paper records.
- We issue as many aids as possible at the time of prescribing to reduce the number of miles we are driving and reduce our carbon emissions and to provide a better service to our patients.
- We are removing window envelopes from our letters. This will remove over 1000 pieces of plastic from our business per year.
- We have removed staples from our printed report forms, and moved to staple free staplers. This means that the patient copy of our recommendations are 100% recyclable.
- We are actively moving to more electronic communications to reduce our printing and paper use.
- We are collecting old spectacles on behalf of Lions Club for recycling.
- Changed our default search engine on all computers to Ecosia. They plant a tree for every search we make
- We only print when we have to. But when we do its on FSC Certified Paper.