DHB On Its Way Toward Sustainability Goal
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Northland DHB's Carbon Footprint and Year Overview 2016-17 report has captured a number of successes, the most significant being a nine percent reduction in the organisation's carbon footprint (refer to graph ‘Results: a reduction of 9 percent of our CO2e).

The 2016-2017 carbon footprint reduction was determined compared to the previous financial year. Northland DHB is therefore well on its way to achieving its goal of reducing greenhouse gases by 15 percent by 2025 compared to 2016.

Over the financial year, fleet fuels overtook gas as the largest greenhouse gas emission category. Most categories under which CO2e emissions are measured have seen a significant decline. The largest reduction is stationary diesel used for diesel boilers to heat water and air. This is the direct result of the change from the diesel boiler at Dargaville Hospital to electric heat pumps saving 51,000L of diesel in the last year.

Within the Transportation of Goods and Patients category, the biggest contributor for the reduction in CO2e emissions was a seven percent decrease in National Travel Assistance kilometre claims of patients who need to travel to mostly Auckland hospital. This saved 226,000 km travelled by patients.

The emission factors of the footprint categories are adjusted every year so in order to look at the actual changes the change in quantities gives a better understanding of what is happening within the Northland DHB.

From the overview (refer to graph ‘What has changed in our consumption’) it can be seen that there has been a decrease in the consumption of fleet fuels of three percent saving almost 20,000 litres of fuel.

One area where Northland DHB is not performing well is waste to landfill. The increase of 7 percent saw an extra 53 tonnes of waste going to landfill. Construction waste from the Bay of Islands hospital redevelopment works is largely responsible for this number, however an increase in delivery of services, number of patients and staff has also been factored in.

A reduction in emissions in electricity is largely due to a greener national grid, our own electricity consumption increased by three percent, which is fairly consistent with the trend of the last couple of years.

Energy audits were performed on Northland DHB hospitals at the end of 2017 in order to create a responsive plan around this electricity consumption and a collaboration agreement with the EECA has been signed.

Six electric vehicles (including the patient shuttle bug at Whangarei Hospital) have been added to the fleet, generic and e-bikes are to be introduced as well. In the area of waste; recycling programmes for medical products like IV bags, oxygen masks, tubing and anaesthetic bottles have been implemented.

The Carbon Footprint and Year Overview 2016-17, as well as Northland DHB’s Sustainability Action Plan 2015-16, can be accessed at https://www.northlanddhb.org.nz/about-us/sustainability/

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