Abstract
Healthcare sector emits over 4% of global carbon emissions. In the UK NHS have recently committed to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2040. Facilitating sustainable consumption of energy, waste and everyday consumables is an important part of reaching that goal. Using examples from the NHS, this practitioner doctorate project aims to discover the drivers, barriers, and levers for facilitating sustainable consumption practices among healthcare employees. The thesis adopts a practice theory perspective and a complementary framework to achieve three objectives: explore healthcare employees’ current attitudes and consumption patterns; identify opportunities for improving sustainability of everyday consumption; propose recommendations on how to encourage it.
Firstly, a novel methodology for applying practice theory to analyse sustainable workplace practices was proposed and implemented. It has demonstrated the benefits of conducting an in-depth analysis of context as part of designing a pro-environmental organisational change project. It was also useful for analysing routine and inconspicuous types of workplace consumption, such as energy, waste and everyday consumables. Secondly, analysis of NHS staff survey has revealed clusters of employees depending on their pro-environmental actions. Understanding the differences between those clusters can be useful to create tailored sustainability strategies. Finally, an ethnographic study conducted in the sponsoring acute hospital trust have confirmed that healthcare employees are concerned with climate change and have positive attitudes towards personal and organisational action. However, lack of allocated time, financial resources or space to implement pro-environmental initiatives remain barriers to change. More needs to be done to improve waste and energy infrastructure and reduce procurement of paper, plastic and single use items. Organisations must help employees develop a wider set of pro-environmental skills that are relevant to their role. And a systematic approach to developing, implementing and maintaining sustainable consumption practices must be adopted.