NGH achieves a green award for its inspirational sustainability work

Northampton General Hospital has won a national environmental award for the way it has encouraged other hospitals to find new ways to reduce carbon emissions and waste.

It has been awarded Sustainability Influencer of the Year at the national Investors in the Environment (iiE) Awards 2025.

The award goes to businesses that have changed behaviours to inspire change beyond their direct business activities.

NGH’s Head of Sustainability, Clare Topping, said: “We won the award for the way we engaged with the independent non-profit Centre for Sustainable Healthcare (CSH) to run a Green Team competition which has resulted in a number of my amazing colleagues completing additional project and talking about their projects locally and nationally.

“The competition encouraged our staff to consider how healthcare could be improved whilst, at the same time, reducing environmental impact.

“Green Team competition projects tend to be small – and are all completed over ten weeks – and so they are easy to replicate across the NHS.

“There is rarely any additional funding required to make the changes and all of our projects have reduced spend, reduced waste and improved staff or patient experience.”

UHN’s Group Director of Facilities and Estates, Rob Drabble, said: “I am delighted that the work done by our teams has been recognised at a national level with this award.

“We hope it shows our commitment to finding ways to increase our sustainability, and reduce waste and our carbon footprint, and to inspire others to do the same through our examples.

“I want to congratulate all the individuals and teams involved in this work for achieving national recognition.”

The key things NGH staff have done to inspire sustainability work both locally and nationally have been:

• The hospital’s Associate Director of Infection Prevention, Dr Holly Slyne, runs the University Hospitals of Northamptonshire’s Greener Nursing and Allied Health Professionals Group. She is also part of the steering committees for three infection prevention special interest groups and is co-authoring position statements about reducing disposable glove use and reusable theatre hats. She has co-organised three sustainability conferences, hosts the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare’s Infection Prevention Network, and is helping them to write infection prevention guidance for green spaces in healthcare.
• Deputy Head Group Procurement, Rachel Pell, sits on the Department of Health and Social Care's Design for Life Product Advisory Group, and discusses our sustainability projects at both a regional and national level.
• Critical Care Nurse, Leeanne Hardy, has organised sustainability workshops for the region to enable other hospitals to learn from each other as well as a full day sustainable critical care meeting. Her work was featured in the National Critical Care Sustainability Recipe Book, and she has gone on to help colleagues in her department and in other departments with their sustainability projects.
• Renal Pharmacist Janeme Lam has presented her work to reduce medicine wastage online and presented posters at national conferences. She has since started further projects and has been talking to patients about medicine waste.
• Infection Prevention and Control Nurse Jasmine Lowdon, has spoken about her project to reduce continence issues from caffeinated drinks and reduce carbon dioxide production at several online forums and locally, with GPs and Care Homes. Jasmine won an internal Green Team award with her work last year.

Work from NGH has also been presented at a DHSC Design for Life meeting at Westminster and featured in the Design for Life report published in October 2024.

The award was presented to Clare Topping on November 20 at the Kingsgate Conference Centre, Peterborough, Stuart Dawks, Chief Executive of the Peterborough Environment City Trust, the environmental charity that own and manage the Investors in the Environment Scheme.

The hospital has also been recognised as having 10 years of Investors in the Environment Green Accreditation along with the University of Northampton, one of only eight organisations to achieve this accolade.

Achieving a Green Accreditation means the hospital has demonstrated it is focused on sustainable development and carbon emission reduction and is committed to finding ways to achieve these goals.

Accreditation also means the Trust has demonstrated continual improvement and delivered a minimum of 2% efficiency improvements year-on-year.