Jacqueline Gordon ©Marcus Rose
There is now little doubt that climate change is having a devastating impact on our planet.
According to the government’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, 79% of UK adults were either fairly or very concerned about the impact of climate change, when surveyed in the summer of 2025.
That’s little surprise. Flooding and record-breaking heatwaves are becoming the norm, and you only need to turn on the TV in the summer to see droughts, wildfires and rising sea levels devastating communities across the planet. And it will be ordinary people who bear the brunt of our changing climate.
“There’s a really strong link between environmental sustainability and health equity,” says Jacqueline Gordon, UNISON member and clinical sustainability manager with Care Without Carbon, working in the NHS in Sussex. Actively tackling climate change improves health outcomes for everyone. Air pollution affects every organ in our bodies, contributing to heart disease, respiratory conditions, diabetes, dementia and premature birth.
“The people whose health is most affected by changes are from marginalised and low-income groups,” Jacqueline continues. “They’re the ones that have the disproportionate exposure. People who work outside, people who have poor housing, people who have the least resources if they are affected by climate events, like flooding or wildfires.”
Making the NHS more sustainable
This is one reason why UNISON has named 2026 as its Year of Green Activity. The union is well placed to take on the challenge, and its members will need little convincing – one recent UNISON survey found that 90% of members are concerned about climate change.
As well as commitment in their private lives, or with their branches, some UNISON members are taking the extra step of taking on the various sustainability roles that exist across the public sector. These roles help public bodies introduce and improve measures that protect the environment and mitigate climate change.
“I became interested in how we make the NHS more sustainable,” says Jacqueline, “because obviously a lot of resources go into the NHS and a lot of waste happens just because of the scale of it.”
Jacqueline has worked as clinical sustainability manager in her trust since 2024. Before that, she spent a year on secondment doing a clinical fellowship for Greener NHS*, hosted by Sussex Integrated Care Board. She was also previously at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.
“In 2021, I was part of the Green Group at Great Ormond Street and took part with some health professionals who cycled from London to Glasgow from all over the country,” she says. “People from lots of different organisations came together to highlight the link between air pollution and children’s health. From that, I became more involved in sustainability at work.”
© Marcus Rose
Jacqueline also works part time as an occupational therapist in east London. “I think it’s really important to stay on the front line and recognise what the pressures are as well,” she says.
“Everywhere you go, people have got ideas, but they either don’t have the time or the understanding about where to go with that idea to change the things that need to be changed,” says Jacqueline. “That’s really my role as a clinical sustainability manager.”
She adds, “The clinical role is that you work with clinicians and say, OK, so you want to change this item from a single-use one to a reusable one. What are the risks? What do we need to know in terms of infection control? How can we make that happen? What are the procurement issues? So, if anybody’s got an idea, they should go to the sustainability team or the manager and say, ‘This is my idea. How can we make it happen?’”
Everything helps, however small
Jacqueline has been inspired by how some of the smaller changes introduced by her team are making such a big difference.
“Some medical students recently reviewed whether a view of green space can affect people’s health recovery, and found that they are discharged quicker. Even if they can see greenery in a window box, that makes a difference.”
Another of the team’s projects was a year-long pilot increasing the number of virtual appointments for neurological rehabilitation (by 1 or 2%). This involved talking to staff about virtual appointments and ensuring they had the training they said they needed. Patient outcomes were as good as those achieved with face-to-face care, and staff saved hundreds of hours of travel time.
“The waiting lists dropped,” she says, adding, “It saved more than 10,000 miles of travel in five months.”
Every trust in the NHS has a Green Plan to help the service reach its goal of net zero by 2040. And sustainability is in focus across the public sector as the government tries to meet its legal commitment to reaching net zero by 2050.
‘The full spectrum of environmental work’
Ashley Dolling © Marcus Rose
Ashley Dolling (pictured above) works as the environment projects officer at Fenland District Council (FDC) in Cambridgeshire. He took the job in October 2024, having previously worked in local government enforcement and the probation service. “It was a bit of a career change for me,” he says. “The environment has always been of personal interest to me and something which I’ve always wanted to work in.”
Ashley is also his UNISON branch’s environment officer, having been inspired to take the position after learning about the union’s Year of Green Activity.
The environment projects officer role at the council came about through the merger of two similar positions as part of a money-saving exercise. Ashley took on “quite a broad remit” as a result.
“My role covers, to a great extent, the full spectrum of environmental work,” he says. “Over the past year, for instance, I’ve coordinated all of the volunteers in Fenland who do all the different kinds of environmental adjacent volunteer work, from litter picking, looking after nature reserves, the In Bloom groups. And I’ve led FDC’s side of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority’s Net Zero Villages project, which was about decarbonising community assets in villages.”
Ashley takes great pride in his role. “My proudest achievement at FDC has to be a joint winner between the partnerships I have formed with external stakeholders and the support for grassroots environmental action that has sprung from doing so, and receiving support from FDC to take a new approach to recycling improvement, using my expertise and knowledge of behaviour change principles as opposed to traditional communications campaigns.”
Countering the sceptics
Despite widespread public support for sustainable policies, there are still those who remain sceptical – or in outright opposition. The insurgent force challenging such policies is Reform UK, which won control of 10 councils last May. Its leader, Nigel Farage, has described net zero aims as “lunacy”.
Among the councils controlled by Reform, Northamptonshire Council has banned use of the term “net zero” entirely; Derbyshire Council has reversed a bid to adapt to the impacts of climate change; Kent County Council has scrapped its climate change emergency declaration and Lincolnshire Council says it has “declared war” on green energy projects.
According to the New Economic Foundation think-tank, Reform’s attacks on climate policy could cost the economy £92bn in lost revenue and more than 60,000 jobs.
While Ashley has experienced little pushback against his green agenda in Fenland, which has no Reform councillors, he will occasionally encounter people in public office who are unconvinced that it’s an issue that needs to be taken seriously.
“I’m not going to sit down with them and try to sell them on the concept of net zero because human-induced climate change is real, because ultimately I’m wasting my breath,” he says. “What makes a lot more sense is to pick a really specific environmental issue and explain why it’s profitable.”
Fenland is in the early stages of introducing new country parks, which Ashley says is a really good example. “Fenland has no country parks. And ONS data shows that Fenland is the third worst local authority area for access to green space.
“I’d be looking at other successful country parks and showing that these are profitable ventures. So, for instance, Huntingdonshire Council has Hinchingbrooke Country Park. That’s a very profitable asset as well as being good for nature, and I’d sell it on those kinds of specific issues.”
Jacqueline agrees that finding points of connection with sceptics is key. “The people who say they don’t agree with sustainability are, usually, the people who say they care a lot about the waste in their health service,” she says. “So it’s kind of like marrying those two together and saying responsible use of resources is part of sustainability.”
The work of people like Ashley and Jacqueline is having a major effect on people’s lives. Despite growing political opposition to climate strategies and the impact of budget squeezes, both have shown what sustainability officers can achieve with even small initiatives. And both say that it’s the involvement and input from other staff that enables the implementation of effective green policies.
UNISON members are well placed to identify and campaign for sustainability-boosting policies in the workplace. UNISON’s Year of Green Activity is the perfect opportunity to get involved and make a real difference.
