Rethink required for carbon neutral goal
There are two stages to emergencies. The first is recognising the pickle you’re in, the second is doing something about it.
Three years from now, the Government’s decision last month to declare a climate emergency will either be remembered as a turning point for our country’s environment, or the most egregious unfilled promise of its six-year term. What separates these two may be our environmentally challenged healthcare sector.
During her speech, Jacinda Ardern laid out a vague plan for the public sector to reach carbon neutrality by 2025. In it were recommendations to make the government’s vehicle fleet all electric, improved building standards, and phasing out of antiquated coal boilers.
There are merits in these measures, but no gymnastics of emissions accounting could bring us close to the 2025 target.
Instead, we must see a radical overhaul of the Aotearoa healthcare sector, which receives 1 of every 5 taxpayer dollars, and is responsible for about 8 per cent of New Zealand’s total emissions.
As most of the sector is directly funded or owned by government, it accounts for the lion’s share of the government’s carbon emissions.
Here are three changes it could make immediately:
Hire for change in the DHBs
This year’s plans are trickling out of the country’s 20 District Health Boards, and there are still no sustainability officers being appointed at an executive level. Every one of these plans has been signed off by central government. There is a clear need for sustainability-oriented leadership.
Even large emitters like Fonterra and Coca-Cola employ people in these roles – because they matter. How will our country’s goals be realised when people driving sustainability don’t have a seat at the leadership table?
Improve carbon reporting for imports
The healthcare sector spends millions importing internationally manufactured medical devices and pharmaceuticals. It’s impossible to quantify exactly how much of this we’re importing, but the last recorded estimate from the Ministry of Health, in 2013, figures that procurement accounts for 61 per cent of the sector’s emissions. That equates to around 6.6m tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions a year.
Because 97 per cent of our medical equipment is imported from overseas, it is exempt from our carbon reporting practices. But it’s clearly an environmentally expensive exercise. We need far more transparency in emissions reporting on imported medical products, and better product stewardship mandated by the government.
Introduce reprocessing and recycling schemes
While we run PR campaigns around buying New Zealandmade products, hundreds of thousands of products are shipped into the country daily. In healthcare, most make a quick stop at the hospital on their way to the landfill.
The United States leads the way for medical device reprocessing. Items are cleaned and tested to 100 per cent of their original quality, and sold back to the hospitals at a low price. If we introduced widespread reprocessing into our hospitals, we could reuse at least
1700 tonnes of medical waste. The government needs to mandate adoption of this type of work.
More than in any other major industry, the government has an essential role in how healthcare operates. It holds the purse strings and is at the table for all major decisions. If the sector cannot dramatically move towards carbon neutrality, it will be hard to see how the commitment to a Carbon Zero government can be fulfilled in the next four years.
It’s time for the government to become the ambassador for meaningful change, and healthcare is the best place to start.