The Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) is seeking feedback from community pharmacies on its guide to making professional practice more environmentally sustainable.
Two guides have been launched by the RPS, one for community pharmacies and one for hospital pharmacies, to raise awareness and capability of reducing environmental impacts within the sector.
The guides set out actions that pharmacy staff and settings can achieve to help the NHS meet its net zero targets.
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To support the documents, in spring 2024 the RPS will launch a Greener Pharmacy Toolkit, allowing community pharmacies to self-accredit their sustainability status.
Pharmacies will be able to upload evidence and write reflections, resulting in a ‘green achievement’ badge of bronze, silver or gold.
To help ensure the guides are ‘current, clear and relevant’, the RPS has launched a consultation, with pharmacists invited to share feedback via an online survey.
The RPS Greener Pharmacy Guide for community pharmacies contains six ‘overarching domains’, which are: people, clinical practice, travel, resource use, information and communications technology (ICT), and operations and strategy.
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Each domain lists various benefits of suggested actions for the pharmacy sector such as time saving, cost saving, improving health and wellbeing of patients and staff, as well as waste reduction.
Community pharmacy staff can read the guide relevant to their practice – with detailed and simplified versions available online – and then complete the consultation questions.
The online survey will run until 8 November 2023.
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Last month, the RPS backed calls for the UK Government to increase knowledge and understanding of human and ecological risks caused by the presence of pharmaceutical products in water bodies.
In the summer, researchers identified a ‘staggering’ amount of prescription drugs in sea water off the UK’s South Coast, alongside pesticides and illegal drugs such as cocaine.
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