in Ambulance Sustainability

Ahead of World Environment Day on June 5th, here at the CAA we asked ourselves the question, ‘What is Sustainability in Ambulance’?

You’ll see from the article on page 60 that as part of the 5 Year Strategy a deeper dive and formal approach is intended on the subject, but for now the first thing to work out is what do we mean by ‘sustainability’?

A good starting point, with help from the Oxford Dictionary, is that sustainability is “the degree to which a process or enterprise can be maintained or continued while avoiding the long-term depletion of natural resources.” That is, how long can we keep doing a thing until that thing has a negative or detrimental impact on the world around us.

As the world continues to grapple with the challenges posed by climate change, sustainability is a key issue that must be addressed in all sectors, including healthcare.

Ambulance services can play a critical role in promoting sustainability and reducing their environmental impact, making World Environment Day an important opportunity to highlight the importance of sustainability in our sector.

As we all know, ambulance services are essential to the health and wellbeing of communities around the world. They provide life-saving care to people in need, often in emergency situations. However, ambulance services also have a significant environmental impact. For example, they consume energy and resources, generate waste, and contribute to air pollution through their use of vehicles.

One important strategy is to continue to investigate, and where possible, adopt more efficient and environmentally friendly vehicles. This can include the use of hybrid or electric vehicles, which produce lower emissions and are more fuel efficient than traditional gasolinepowered vehicles. Many Australasian ambulance services already use bicycles to assist in environments where speed is still paramount but getting through crowds would be impossible for a motor vehicle.

Another area worth considering is, so long as it is operationally safe to do so, ambulance services can practise and adopt eco-driving practices, including driving at lower speeds and avoiding unnecessary idling.

Many industries are closely examining their supply chain and consumables usage with the aim of reducing waste generation. This can be done in many different ways, and as we saw in FIRST #12, initiatives such as St John NT’s uniform recycling initiative helps reduce landfill and textile waste.

A part of a review of an organisation’s consumable also covers the use of facility resources, implementing energy-efficient lighting and HVAC (heating, airconditioning and ventilation) if possible and, as an example for our sector, promoting telehealth and other remote healthcare services to reduce the need for ambulance transport.

World Environment Day 2023 is a great opportunity to promote sustainability in ambulance services as well as to showcase sustainability efforts and to promote best practices. If you are aware of positive initiatives underway in your organisation, why not let us know so we can share it in the next edition of FIRST, in our regular email newsletter or even our social media channels. It might even make a good entry for the 2024 CAA Awards for Excellence.