The UN Sustainable Development Goals are a collection of 17 global goals adopted by all United Nations Member States. They are designed to be a “blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all”.

Every few weeks we will share Here’s progress on one of these goals. Last month we were focused on Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production.

“Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.” 

Let’s look at how Here has been a significant local employer for the last few years.

The chart below shows the carbon emission impact from al of Here’s purchases. To measure this, we must categorise all of Here’s purchases into types and apply different carbon factors per group, depending on their impact on the environment. Here’s biggest category by far is “Services” where we purchase some kind of service from a supplier. This could be a professional service such as accounting or legal, of physiotherapy services, or courier services.

In 19/20 we had the Wellbeing service, and Benfield, the latter which we also had until the end of July 2021. Our consumption has reduced dramatically since then but has plateaued despite having less people. We will be looking at this by service over the year and working with teams to see where we can reduce the carbon impact.

What else have we done to promote responsible consumption and production?

For our employees:

• Our twice-weekly free vegan lunches for staff at 177 office have not only provided a sustainable way for our employees to have lunch, but also introduced to many vegan recipes and allowed them to experience how tasty they can be.
• As well as using local suppliers where possible, we bulk buy our office refreshment supplies from  a co-operative Infinity Foods. We also buying our stationary in bulk to reduce delivery carbon impact.
• Our electricity energy consumption is from Octopus which is 100% sustainable energy, we also have solar panels on roof.
• We recycle as much as possible in the office, including food waste, batteries and vapes. In 23/24, the amount we recycled went down by 19% but the amount we sent to landfill went down by 5% too.

• In 2020 we switched everyone to using laptops, which consumes 80% less energy than  desktops. We also limited the use of screens at home to one, which reduces our consumption and personal energy use.
• We switched most of our printers to print in black and white
• For our participation in Pride last year, we made sure that our purchasing was sustainable,  sustainably sourced T Shirts and resources that can be reused for subsequent events.
• For off-sites and awaydays we have been re-thinking our venue choice to use local venues and those with better public transport links to reduce the carbon travel impact. Where possible, we actively encourage lift-sharing. Board meetings are now held at the Worth Corner Business Centre rather than Spithurst Hub to reduce the carbon impact. After comparing the data between the travel to Spithurst and the new location in Crawley so far in 2024, we have seen a reduction of 70% in the volume of carbon generated by this travel (from 121.5 kg of CO2 to 35.5kg of CO2).

For our patients:  

We encourage responsible consumption and disposal of medical supplies with our provision of NHS services. This will be an area of focus for Here in 24/25.

Transition to animations and website and apps for MSK, but also need hard copy to enable accessibility. Aim to measure carbon impact of difference ways of accessing advice.

For our wider community: 

Here has been conducting a review of suppliers to encourage us to choose suppliers who are:

• Small (less than 50 employees)
• Local
• A social enterprise
• Have green credentials
• Are modern slavery cognizant
• Pay the Real Living Wage

What do we plan to do?   

• In 24/25 we plan to work with all our services to review how we can be more responsible in our consumption of medical supplies and in their disposal. We hope to work with other local teams to share best practice and supplier knowledge. Lesley Jay and Kristin Francis have already joined the Greener Practice network where they share knowledge in primary care across Sussex. We plan to review our consumption patterns by service, and work with the operational teams to see how we can rethink or reduce our consumption and thereby reduce our carbon footprint. We plan to share the learning across services and embed it into any future services.

• The Sustainability Team and working with MSK to review the carbon savings from our MSK Transformation projects, which we plan to report on as we complete the analysis.

• Knight Frank have agreed to add Sustainability as a standing agenda item for the 6 monthly tenants meetings going forward.
• We plan to reach out to other partners we work with about sustainability goals e.g. Clinical Education and Yma.

Are we supporting any suppliers who are doing good in this area?

In 23/24, we spent £12k with Solus who are a supplier of refreshments, t-shirts and stationary for Here.

We support them as a business as they have received an ISO14001 Environmental Management System accreditation, with 60% of their energy usage from their own solar energy system. They also have zero-emission delivery fleets and are committed to eliminating unnecessary supply chain packaging.

What can we do at home to responsible consumption and production? 

• We have hit peak stuff. A bold statement, but we can avoid adding to this problem by encouraging a circular economy.  Want to know more? Here is a useful link.

• Nearly all of us now are committed to using reusable water bottles and coffee mugs, rather than plastic options which are purchased and thrown away.

• Recycle, recycle recycle!

• Buy social – next time you are purchasing, have a quick look in the Social Supermarket where you can buy all sorts of things direct from social enterprises. Be warned though, you can get lost for hours just browsing all the brilliant products!

• Holidays – measure the impact of your own carbon footprint and the impact of your actions using this calculator.

Reduce waste weblink: Love Food Hate Waste / Preventing food waste

A charity who work with 153 organisations across Sussex and Surrey to redistribute surplus produce to those who need it most through their networks.

The Real Junk Food Project in Brighton, has the wonderful tag line of “Feed bellies not bins”. They intercept food waste destined for landfill and use it to feed people in cafes, projects and pop-ups on a “pay as you feel” basis. Those in need are not degraded or shamed for taking a free or cheap meal, likewise those who can afford it are not pestered into more and more donations. Everyone is equal in getting fed, it is up to the individual to pay what they feel.

What responsible production and consumption campaign days can you get involved with?  

March 30 International day of zero waste driven by the UN to raise awareness of the issues in the waste production and removal process globally and what is being done to help.

May 8 World Fair Trade Day a global celebration held on the second Saturday in May to help us envision a world where trade helps support small-scale farmers, producers and their families, cultivating healthy and sustainable communities globally.

June 16 World Refill Day is a global campaign to prevent plastic pollution and help people live with less waste. A day of action uniting our global community every year on 16th June, the campaign is designed to create an alternative vision of the future and accelerate the transition away from single-use plastic towards refill & reuse systems.

July Plastic Free July^® is a global movement that helps millions of people be part of the solution to plastic pollution – so we can have cleaner streets, oceans, and beautiful communities.

The Sustainability Team

The UN Sustainable Development Goals are a collection of 17 global goals adopted by all United Nations Member States. They are designed to be a “blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all”.

Every few weeks we will share Here’s progress on one of these goals. In February we were focused on Goal 10 Reduced Inequalities.

What else have we done to reduce inequalities? 

Whilst we are an equal opportunities employer, there are many things that we do to ensure that we carry this forward in how we work.

Reducing inequalities for our employees:

• We are committed to being a Real Living Wage employer, implementing the last two annual increases within 4 weeks of being announced. In FY2022-23, this increased the pay immediately of 12 employees, and in FY2023-24 it impacted 23 employees.
• We have embedded into policy an annual inflationary pay uplift for all employees.
• We are piloting the concept of pay and terms transparency at board level and for two further teams.
• We report annually on our gender pay gap statistics as can be seen on our website here. Our Emerging Leaders Learning Circle discussed what we learnt from this report.
• Seven of our nine board members are female, against a trend in the UK of only 40% of board members being female.
• We offer flexible working arrangements to allow us to employ people with varied life commitments. At the end of 2023, 51% of our employees worked part-time, including casual contractors.
• Our Employee Assistance Programme offers a free 24/7 service to allow all employees to access anonymous guidance on a range of issues including financial management, counselling and legal issues.
• This year we started offering free period products in our toilets.
• Our Equality and Diversity mandatory training session for all employees has 91% compliance currently.

Reducing inequalities for our patients:

• We have been hosting MSK Community Appointment Days (CAD) in community hubs to make our MSK services more accessible to communities.
• First Contact Physiotherapists based in GP surgeries, bringing them closer to patients for their convenience.
• Ensuring that access to our pathways is available in both digital and non-digital methods so that the service is available to all.
• We highlight any safeguarding risks in the delivery of services.
• Ensuring access to healthcare via non-digital pathways as well as digital.
• Pioneering production of health equity data with respect to access to and outcomes within our services.
• Diversifying access into MSK services ensuring inclusion across the board, for example, via self-referral electronic and soon to be launched telephone referral. We have also introduced self-booking for patients.
• Our MSK service offers the translation of outcome letters for patients.
• Utilising translation and interpreter services wherever needed in our services to ensure that patients access and receive the most from our services.
• Additional Primary Care offer phone of face-to-face appointments for equity of access.

Our physios treating patients at a Community Appointment Day (CAD)

Reducing inequality for our wider community:

• In January we radically changed our recruitment process to reach candidates from all backgrounds and to ensure a fair and unbiased selection process using the recruitment platform Teamtailor.
• MSK Big Conversation public events to connect with and better serve population especially in the most deprived areas. These events help us to co-produce events and our services through ongoing discussion and feedback with our communities.
• We work with Brighton Women’s Centre via our MSK contract.
• Offering vegan lunches at Big Conversations and other external events.
• Menopause education to businesses via our Menopause at Work service.
• We offer women-only physio gym classes under our MSK services following patient feedback.
• We run Stroke Peer Support Groups (PSGs) to help and support stroke survivors, carers & family cope with life after stroke. The PSGs are useful to survivors’ recovery and give hope, hearing others talk, sharing and learning from other’s experiences through social interaction in easily accessible community and hospital settings.
• Conscious work stream to underscore our commitment to identify and eradicate Modern Slavery including training for clinicians to help identify potential victims (more likely to be women). Compliance is at 97% completion.
• Here took part in Brighton Pride in 2023 and plan to continue to do so every year, our banners highlighted the disparity in health care equity in the LGBTQ+ community.
• We hold health population data analysis for the MSK East service and several local GP surgeries.

What do we plan to do? 

• We are exploring a women’s health policy covering how we can help women manage their health at work.
• Our landlord is exploring with us whether we can install a gender-neutral toilet,we invited employees to join the working group.
• As well as reporting on the gender pay gap, we are exploring whether we have sufficient data to report on ethnicity pay gap reporting and explore whether there are inequalities that we need to address.

Suppliers we support who are doing good:

• Infinity Foods Wholesale is a local company that we purchase many of our refreshments from, as well as being a local co-operative, they have been supporting two projects that help redistribute unsaleable foods.
• Local foodbank Phoenix Food Hub and Whitehawk Community Food Project. More info here.

Two local charities to highlight to everyone that are doing great things in this area are:

Brighton & Hove Albion Foundation: mentoring young people, diversionary activity, tackling discrimination, disability awareness. Link here.

Brighton Women’s Centre: To empower women and children to improve their life chances and lead independent lives by reducing inequalities through the provision of holistic and integrated services. Link here.

What can else can we all do to help reduce inequalities?

Raise your voice against any type of discrimination. Everyone is equal regardless of their gender, race, sexual orientation, social background and physical abilities.

Register to vote and make sure your voice is heard, particular as an election is likely this year. One of the issues contributing to rising inequalities is caused by the lack of representation of minorities and underprivileged groups in government. It is important to raise diverse engagement and representation in institutions of power.

Gather or donate the appliances, food, clothes needed for a local charity who supports migrants, shelters and other minority community groups.

Try to be aware of ethical purchasing including Fair Trade products. Sometimes these can more expensive, but not always so it’s worth exploring the options.

The Sustainability Team