Article taken from Health Investor The NHS should discriminate against firms with poor green credentials when commissioning services, the director of its new sustainability taskforce demanded.
David Pencheon, director of the NHS Sustainable Development Unit (SDU), told Health Investor: "The NHS needs to send out a message that we will start to preferentially do business with organisations that can demonstrate their own commitment to sustainability and a low-carbon future."
Procurement is responsible for up to 60 per cent of the health service's carbon footprint, according to a report by the SDU, and will be a major factor in attempts to reduce carbon emissions by 10 per cent by 2015 (from a 1990 baseline).
Pencheon stressed that the NHS had to move away from a culture where cheaper bids are preferred to companies offering long-term returns on sustainability.
"Currently what we've been doing is procuring mainly on the basis of cost and whether it delivers what we want now," he said. "We need to make it clear to companies that getting their own house in order will be a criterion in procurement."
The NHS may have to overhaul its accounting principles in order to accommodate the sustainability agenda, Pencheon added.
"One of the challenges for our colleagues in the accounting system is how we better build in whole lifetime costs into decisions," he said. "Do we buy something that is cheap and fits the bill, but is ultimately unsustainable, or do we buy something that is sustainable but might have a higher initial capital cost but that has a lower lifetime cost? We can't do the second more desirable option because we are forced by our accounting system to demonstrate return on investment too early."