Meet our clinical sustainability fellows | Sustainability at Barts Health

Zahra is the sustainability clinical fellow for Dentistry and joined Green at Barts Health, focussing on making dentistry more sustainable.  

In January, Kenworthy Road Dental Clinic was officially opened, a student run service offering free dental care in north east London. Zahra worked with the construction team during the building of the clinic to ensure sustainable features were included in the infrastructure, such as LED lighting, rain water harvesting for the toilets, a heat recovery system, in house decontamination and secure cycle racks.

“My journey in sustainability began when I returned from maternity leave in 2020 at the peak of the pandemic and I was shocked at the amount of waste we were producing in Dentistry. I had already made changes to my personal life as I was concerned about the future of my three daughters and wanted them to grow up respecting the environment they live in.”

Zahra’s leads on a project called 'Envirodent', a multi-faceted improvement initiative to make environmentally friendly changes to dentistry, having already proven effective, saving in cost and carbon emissions, these initiatives include:

•  holding training sessions and sustainability workshops with students and staff on how their clinics can be more sustainable.
•   implementing remote dental consultations and providing preventative advice to our communities.
•  redesigning equipment and repurposing furniture in staff areas.
• looking at ways we can optimise use of Nitrous oxide for conscious sedation whilst mitigating waste.

“Part of the application process to become a sustainability clinical fellow was putting forward a project you would like to roll out. As I work in theatres, I wanted to set up a solid framework to encourage greener theatres across the Trust to support local projects.”

Puja is a healthcare support worker at the Intensive Care Unit at Newham Hospital. She also acts as the hospital’s clinicalsustainability fellow. She has a Masters in environmental sciences and is an associate member of the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (AIEMA).

“I am passionate about sustainability, climate sciences and innovations in green technologies. Through my role as a clinical sustainability fellow, I saw an opportunity to reduce the negative environmental impacts that may come from a clinical set-up, and play an active part in our journey towards net zero, without interfering with patient care.”

Her current project is focussing on reducing the amount of plastic waste that is generated within all intensive care units across our hospitals, and ensuring that all plastic waste is being recycled through the trust’s new waste management contract, which has brought new dry mixed recycling bins across our sites.

Natasha is a consultant anaesthetist and sustainability clinical fellow for Whipps Cross Hospital and co-chair of Green at Barts Health. 

“There is a huge amount of capacity for our organisation to adapt to become more sustainable, and many teams have fantastic changes they have made or wish to. The beauty of the sustainability fellowships is being able to support these and share experience across the sites.”

Her current projects involve working with stakeholders to find solutions to reducing the level of anaesthetic gases that are used in areas such as theatres and maternity and moving the Trust to reusable theatre gowns and hats.  

“Anaesthetic gases have a huge impact on our carbon footprint, and the way we currently transport it means that most of it is leaking and going to waste before it even reaches a patient. By creating new solutions to transport this more responsibly we limit the amount of carbon emissions we used, helping us reach our net zero goals.” 

Recently, Natasha worked on project that secured funding for new technology that is able to capture anaesthetic gasses that is breathed out by patients who are under general anaesthesia, so that it can be extracted and reused. This is currently being piloted in theatres as part of Whipps Cross redevelopment.