It is well known that our planet is facing a climate emergency and climate change is the most significant health threat that our world has ever faced.
With regards to pharmacy, medicines are responsible for 25% of the carbon emissions of the NHS, so our future Royal College of Pharmacy (RCPharm) will have a big role to play in reducing this percentage.
As a new charity with public benefit as its object, it is important that the RCPharm — in supporting pharmacy professionals achieve excellence in patient care and practice — does this in a sustainable way, ensuring the climate emergency is recognised in our daily practice.
The Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) and Pharmacy Declares have been at the forefront of ensuring pharmacy professionals practice in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way and both have supported the RPS’s ‘Greener pharmacy guide and toolkit’, which can be built upon to develop a similar but enhanced RCPharm greener pharmacy guide and toolkit, with emphasis on public benefit.
There will be different details for hospital, community, GP practice and industry but the end goals will always be the same, ensuring medicines packaging recycling, inhaler recycling schemes, reduction of medicines wastage and proper used medicines disposal, along with many other environmentally friendly practices.
Health promotion campaigns for the general public will also be an essential tool to ensure patients and the general public contribute their bit to ensure the RCPharm can enable pharmacy practice to be the most sustainable it can be.
Operationally, ensuring the RCPharm itself has a sustainability lead who can oversee it’s vision for sustainability in pharmacy will be important, as will ensuring sustainability and climate change are prominent in the 2026–2031 five-year strategy that the new Royal College will produce on its inception.
With all new pharmacists from August 2026 having an independent prescribing qualification, the RCPharm — in its support for prescribing pharmacists — should instil a sustainable prescribing mantra among newly qualified prescribers so they are mindful of reducing medicine wastage etc. in their prescribing.
The RCPharm, in collaboration with the General Pharmaceutical Council and the schools of pharmacy, should ensure the climate change emergency and sustainability in pharmacy practice are prominent in pharmacy students’ curriculum and is constantly updated periodically.
If voted in, I will ensure the RCPharm supports sustainable and environmentally friendly pharmacy practice for the public benefit.
Adebayo Adegbite
Candidate for the National Pharmacy Advisory Council for England
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