Published on 24 January 2023
Making sustainability our business-as-usual practice
On behalf of our sustainability team I’m thrilled to share the Western Health Sustainability Plan 2020-2025 with the organisation. This new plan outlines what we need to do as a health service to reduce our carbon footprint and ultimately achieve the Victorian Government’s target of net zero emissions by 2050.
The World Health Organization recognises climate change to be “the highest-impact global risk to society as a whole and presents a clear and present danger to health security”. We know climate change will disproportionately affect disadvantaged communities and as a health service we will need to respond to the impacts of climate change on human health.
Western Health’s Strategic Directions 2021-2023 identifies sustainability as a guiding principle of our core business activity. The holistic approach required to integrate sustainability into daily practice and decision making is challenging given the organisation’s size and complex daily operations.
In order to facilitate the integration of sustainability in corporate decision making, the plan outlines the importance of implementing a Sustainability Task Group. The objective of this group is to oversee the organisational transformation required to embed sustainability into our operations.
This strategic and multi-disciplinary team will be responsible for designing and overseeing the delivery of sustainability integration at Western Health. Consisting of senior leaders from across the organisation, they will provide accountability and transparency in translating the Strategic Directions into outcomes across the organisation.
With the implementation of our Sustainability Plan, Western Health will be a sustainability leader among health services across Australia.
In the coming weeks we will announce the members of the Sustainability Task Group and I would like to ensure that the broader organisation has any opportunity to contribute to our plan and help us make sustainability core business.
Regards
John Ferraro
Chief Operating Officer