In October 2025, the Health Service Executive (HSE) Climate Action and Sustainability Office and the Emergency Medicine Programme celebrated a major milestone in healthcare sustainability, as four Irish Emergency Care sites have now achieved Bronze status in the Royal College of Emergency Medicine’s (RCEM) GreenED Programme.
This achievement marks the successful progression of the Green Emergency Medicine initiative, launched in partnership with the Health Service Executive (HSE) Climate Action and Sustainability Office and the National Clinical Programme for Emergency Medicine in Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI). Supported by SPARK Innovation Funding, the project demonstrates the HSE’s commitment to reducing healthcare’s environmental footprint while maintaining the highest standards of patient care.
The four participating sites – University Hospital Waterford, University Hospital Galway, Mayo University Hospital and Bantry Injury Unit – have completed Phase I of the GreenED accreditation programme, implementing practical measures to reduce the environmental impact of Emergency Department (ED) and Injury Unit (IU) operations while maintaining or improving standards of patient care.
The GreenED framework, developed by RCEM, empowers ED staff to lead sustainability improvements within their departments, even in high-pressure clinical environments. Through this programme, staff have introduced targeted interventions to reduce energy use, waste and emissions, while maintaining safety, efficiency and quality of care.
Key outcomes of this project include:
- Carbon Measurement and Reduction: Using RCEM’s GreenED carbon calculators, teams measured and began reducing emissions from heating, lighting and medical supplies.
- Collaborative Action: Multidisciplinary staff at each site engaged in locally led interventions guided by the GreenED framework.
- Education and Knowledge Sharing: An eLearning module, informed by the experiences of these pilot sites, is in development to support other EDs and IUs in starting their sustainability journeys.
The success of these four sites demonstrates the scalability and impact of the approach and represents an important step toward embedding environmental sustainability into emergency care across Ireland. Seven additional sites will take part in the RCEM Green ED programme in 2026 bringing the total to 11 sites on an accreditation journey.
In addition, the National Clinical Programme in Emergency Medicine have launched the Green Emergency Medicine Guide” : a national quality improvement framework supporting Emergency Departments, Injury Units and Urgent Care Centres to start their sustainability journey. The framework sets out a scalable approach using a tiered structure of Must Do, Should Do and Could Do interventions and lays the groundwork for sites to progress towards the RCEM accreditation journey.
