Torrington Health Centre has committed to the Green Impact scheme. This is the National Union of Students’ successful sustainability accreditation scheme. It has been running since 2006. Over 200 different organisations now take part, including universities and colleges, local authorities, NHS Trusts and dental practices. For more information, please visit www.nus.org.uk/greenimpact.
The Green Impact for general practices is new and has been developed in collaboration with the University of Bristol, the RCGP and NHS Health Education South West. Green Impact follows a simple but effective cycle, focusing on providing simple actions, supporting people to make the changes and rewarding them for their efforts.
Each programme is individually crafted to suit to the organisations with which it engages, whether it be students’ unions, universities and colleges, NHS Trusts, local authorities or any of our pilots in new sectors. We use an online workbook. Each bespoke workbook outlines specific and measurable criteria, covering several main aspects of sustainability: waste, water, travel, energy, procurement, and greening teams and communications.
Each criterion has a reason why its being asked, and the method of evaluation, so each team can see how to achieve it. Each is linked these to resources and examples of best practice, and support teams through the logging process.
The Green Impact team then audit, either through student auditors or through others in the team, to verify the results and offer an opportunity to improve.
And finally, Green Impact presents participants with an award, from working towards Bronze right the way up to Gold, Platinum and Excellence in some organisations to recognise the impressive variety of green actions taken across the year