How to become a more eco-friendly GP practice

Mile Oak Medical Centre in Brighton is leading the way in efforts to be more sustainable. Dr Abigail Fry, a GP partner at the practice, shares tips and resources that help other surgeries become greener

Global climate change is regarded by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as the single biggest health threat facing humanity, presenting a persistent and growing environmental burden of disease with significant public health consequences.

To play its part in reducing carbon emissions – which are by far the largest contributor to climate change – the NHS in England has set targets to reach net zero by 2040 for direct emissions and 2045 for emissions it influences. Primary care contributes almost a fifth (23%) of the NHS’ carbon footprint (13% of which is due to asthma inhalers alone).

It is concerning to realise that some of the decisions being made in GP practices are resulting in worsening of the climate crisis and that this change is negatively impacting our patients’ health. Luckily, there are online resources that can support you and your team in increasing your environmental sustainability, which will improve the health of your patients. If you can start on this journey your staff will be happier too, and your retention will improve.

Our practice, Mile Oak Medical Centre in Brighton, struggled to know what to do at the start, and the whole process felt insurmountable. This is a common experience. However, we are so glad we decided to take action – it has resulted in a lot of positive change for the practice and patients (see box below). And we are now only one of a handful of practices in the UK to have achieved a Platinum Award for sustainability.

So, what resources are available for primary care?

There are two very helpful online resources that practices and PCNs can use, which work closely together. They are:

1.The Greener Practice platform

This is a new website that was developed in response to primary care requests for a central place to access sustainability resources and support. It is endorsed by the Royal College of GPs (RCGP), Greener NHS, CQC, appraisers and GP training hubs. 

It currently contains over 100 Resources for practices and PCNs. These include Green Plan templates, posters, surveys and guidelines that will help with your CQC inspections.

It also has over 50 Quality Improvement Projects (QIPs). The QIPs offer step-by-step guidance, with ready-made text messages to send to patients and reports to run, so anyone in the practice team can do them, including students and trainees. The projects can be filtered by staff member, topics, time taken and money saved. There are case studies and top tips so people’s previous successes and difficulties can be shared and learned from.

There is a networking section, where you can find others who have joined the network in your local area and link up with colleagues who have similar interests to yours.

Additionally, there is a wide variety of educational resources about the effects of primary health care on the climate and how the climate crisis is impacting the health of our community.

The website and membership are free, but there is a small cost for the QIP library and Resource library. This is so that both can be continuously updated and expanded. Many PCNs, practices and individuals are already using the platform— don’t let yours be the last!

2.The Green Impact for Health Toolkit (GIFH)

This is a free, online resource that supports practices in taking simple actions to become more eco-friendly, ethical and environmentally aware. It is also supported by the RCGPs.

It comprises five key levels of achievement, ranging from a Bronze award to a Diamond award – taking practices through tangible actions to improve sustainability. There are over 125 different possible actions, so you will never again feel at a loss over what you could do with your practice.

The available awards are:

• Bronze: Your practice needs to achieve 75 points from the toolkit. 
• Silver: You need to achieve 150 points from the toolkit. 
  Gold: You need to achieve 225 points from the toolkit.
• Platinum: You need to achieve 300 points from the toolkit. (This was previously called the Gold plus award.)
• Diamond: You need to have gained a Platinum award and completed enough criteria on the Diamond theme to demonstrate that you have achieved net zero carbon status in your general practice. (This was previously called the Carbon award.)

Every practice that completes criteria will receive an award, even if they have not yet reached 75 points for a Bronze award. Instead, they will receive a Green Impact for Health Pioneer certificate to demonstrate the commitment they have made.

So, what is the difference between the two?

The Greener Practice platform is mainly a clinical resource, (clinical processes are where around 75% of the carbon in primary care originates from), whereas the GIFH toolkit is mainly non-clinical.

Crucially, the GIFH toolkit tells you what to do but the Greener Practice platform gives you the tools to do it.

Our practice began engaging with the GIFH toolkit in 2020 and achieved a Platinum Award in 2023. We signed up for the Greener Practice platform when it was released this summer. We joined both websites because we were worried about climate change and the effect it was having on our patients, particularly the most vulnerable ones, and because we wanted to reduce primary care’s contribution to carbon emissions.

Several people in my practice are now using the QIPs from the Greener Practice platform for their audits, and the policies in the Resource library have been particularly useful to our manager.   

Top tips for success

Change can be hard in practices, but by looking through both resources and starting small, success will come your way. Many things can help at the start of your journey:

1. Start small – choose one action at a time to work on.
2. Raise the profile – add sustainability as a standing item on every meeting agenda.
3. Write your green plan – all organisations in the NHS now need a green plan, and CQC will expect this to be available at inspections. Writing this will start discussions in your practice.
4. Think about the motivators in your practice. Are the managers and partners motivated by money, concerns about the climate, patient health, staff wellbeing, or competition with other practices? Choose your actions to tie in with the main motivator
5. Speak to other practices in your locality, share tips and find out what award they have achieved on the GIFH toolkit. Primary care staff are often quite competitive, use this to your advantage. You could even set up a local league table to support friendly competition between practices.
6. Involve your patient participation group – patients are often keen for you to become more aware of environmental issues. I have received thank you letters from patients for this work in my practice.
7. Educate the team – it is likely that many of your staff are not aware of the NHS target to become Net Zero by 2040.
8. Include the whole team – ask for ideas about what changes could be made to lower the practice’s carbon footprint.
9. Task different teams with the areas they are most interested in, For example, give your admin team permission to think about reducing the carbon footprint around printing.
10. State your aim to improve your carbon footprint on job adverts. We have found many candidates apply for jobs at our practice because this factor made us stand out. One GP left their previous job to join us because of this alone.
11. Most of all, have fun. Think of enjoyable activities you can do as a practice, such as holding a vegan baking competition or a pub-style sustainability quiz during a practice learning afternoon.

You will be amazed at what you can achieve if you begin to make some of these changes. Our team’s morale is much higher, staff say they are proud to be working at such a ‘green’ practice, and patients have said they are grateful too.

Evidence of good practice

The Greener Practice platform and the GIFH toolkit make measuring change easy. For example, certificates are produced at the end of any QIPs on Greener Practice, which can be shown as evidence to CQC or at your annual appraisals and points are earned for specific actions on the GIFH toolkit.

There has been a powerful ripple effect from the changes we have made. All five practices in my PCN have won awards on the GIFH toolkit, and behavioural changes have been reported from our staff. Many now report reducing their car use, and are becoming more socially conscious consumers.

Another positive outcome is that other ICBs, PCNs, research groups, medical environmental groups and conferences have been interested in finding out about the changes we have made.

The future

As such a large employer, I believe it’s vital for the NHS to take the journey towards greater sustainability; otherwise, we are contributing to the health problems of the very patients we are trying to help.

By engaging in environmental sustainability, nurses and GPs, as the top two most trusted professionals, can help raise the profile of ‘green’ issues within communities and prevent the NHS from causing avoidable harm. And remember this quote from Martin Luther King Jr, ‘You don’t have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step’.

If you would like to find out more about the Greener Practice platform, you can sign up to a webinar on Tuesday 18 November 2025 at 1pm. You will be able to get a quick tour of the website and find out how greener healthcare delivers better patient outcomes, cost savings for your practice, happier teams, and CQC confidence. Current users will share what they have found particularly helpful and what tools they use the most, and there will be time for a Q&A.

Dr Abigail Fry is a GP partner and trainer at Mile Oak Medical Centre, Brighton and a director of Greener Practice