Resources for assessing environmental impacts
There are different ways to assess environmental impacts.
Tools vary as to what gets included in the calculations and how it is measured. It is important to consider this when embarking on the assessment. For example, you need to make sure you calculate impacts beyond carbon emissions, such as water usage. You also need to make sure any carbon/environmental assessments are fully inclusive of all emission scopes.
Some useful healthcare specific resources include:
- The carbon footprint guide to remote consultations from the Centre for Sustainable healthcare
- Sustainable Healthcare Coalition’s Care Pathways Carbon footprint calculator.
- Measuring Healthcare’s Environmental Impacts from Cascades.
- The HealthcareLCA database provides a central repository of environmental assessments of health systems, hospitals, surgical procedures, medical equipment, and pharmaceuticals from around the world.
More general resources on measurement tools and methodologies include:
- Green Web Foundation's tools for working towards a fossil free Internet.
- Cloud Carbon footprint allows you to measure, monitor and reduce your cloud carbon emissions.
- This article gives a roundup on what Google, Microsoft and AWS offer for measuring and reporting on carbon emissions on their platforms.
- Green Software Foundation's collaborative projects include multiple tools.
- Digital Life Cycle Assessments blog from Tim Frick
- The Basic Sustainability Assessment Tool is a simple, general tool for scoring sustainability progress. It is aimed at small- to medium-sized enterprises.
Reputable companies that can undertake assessments include GoCodeGreen.
We recommend you make your assessments openly accessible.