The Sustainable Kidney Care Committee leads the UK Kidney Association’s work to reduce the environmental impact of kidney care while supporting high-quality care for patients. It helps kidney services respond to the NHS’s net zero ambitions and consider sustainability across clinical practice, education, procurement and service development.
The committee brings together members of the kidney community and works with professional groups, patients, national organisations, industry and international partners to develop practical approaches, share learning and support change across kidney services.
Medical Co-Chair
MPT Co-Chair
Workstream lead: Frances Mortimer & Gloria Munoz-Figueroa
Members:
The aim of the Action Learning and Education workstream is to inspire and empower members of the kidney care community to take action for sustainability. Building on previous successes, we apply a two-pronged approach:
Goal – 60 ‘active’ champions across all UK kidney sites (main or satellite units).
The multiprofessional workstream includes members from a wide range of kidney care professions across the UK.
Implementing Best Practice project
This partnership project established the foundations for the national benchmarking framework, Sustainability Champions scheme and modelling of potential carbon, water and cost savings.
This workstream is the key interface with the wider supply chain, where the bulk of kidney care carbon emissions, reside, and has now been subsumed into the global GREEN-K initiative’s procurement workstream (co-led by Suren Kanagasundaram).
Find out more about GREEN-K here.
Goal – Finalise and disseminate a global, generic joint statement of demand of industry for kidney care products and services, covering decarbonisation, circularity and other defined domains.
This workstream is embedding environmental sustainability within kidney care pathways, including relevant clinical standards and guidelines.
This workstream aims to embed climate resilience into UK kidney care services and facilities and in the supply chains we rely on. It will become increasingly important as the climate crisis worsens. The UKKA Sustainable Kidney Care Committee is a member of the LIFE-RESYSTAL scaling network that seeks to build climate resilience across European health systems and share best practices.
Would you like to be your centre’s sustainability champion?
Help us to work collaboratively to meet targets, improve dissemination of best practices and be a sustainability point of contact for your kidney centre. Open to all staff from any discipline.
GREEN-K (Global Environmental Evolution in Nephrology and Kidney Care) is an international initiative developing a coordinated approach to more sustainable and climate-resilient kidney care. It brings together kidney organisations and professionals worldwide to support change through advocacy, education and collaboration.
A UKKA member sits on the ISN’s GREEN-K Steering Committee.
We support the role of kidney dietitians in helping people with kidney disease make healthy, appropriate and more sustainable food choices. We contributed to Plant-powered Planet: Building a Healthy and Sustainable Food System, which sets out recommendations for increasing plant-based options, reducing food waste and improving nutrition education across healthcare.
These resources should be used alongside individual advice from a kidney dietitian.
The committee hosts regular webinars to share learning, highlight progress and explore emerging priorities in sustainable kidney care.
In this featured webinar, speakers examine climate resilience and the development of GREEN-K, alongside practical work taking place across kidney services. Topics include water reuse in dialysis, sustainable and plant-based diets, regional initiatives, the Sustainability Champions network and benchmarking progress.
We continue to examine all areas of environmental impact within our practice, and this includes our need to fly for conferences and other work events. Air travel to a single international conference can generate more carbon emissions in one trip than the average person emits over the course of a whole year. We are committed to exploring new models of learning and sharing that allow our specialty to develop while reducing the harm to our planet. With this in mind, a number of kidney care specialists have made “No Fly” pledges for academic and work reasons.
