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A manifesto for health and climate in Scotland has been launched by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) and the Royal College of GPs (RCGP) Scotland.
The manifesto, launched ahead of the Scottish Parliamentary elections in May 2026, has made six calls upon the next Scottish government around sustainable prescribing and reducing the environmental impact of medicines.
It said that medicines account for around 25% of carbon emissions in the NHS, outlining its goal is to help the NHS in Scotland to reach its net zero ambition by 2040.
The six recommendations include an urgent acceleration of the electronic prescribing programme, which the document said would reduce the “paper administration burden” as well as freeing up clinicians’ time to care for patients.
The Digital Prescribing and Dispensing Pathways (DPDP) programme, led by NHS National Services Scotland and NHS Education for Scotland, is aimed to replace paper prescriptions with digital versions.
The manifesto has also called for primary care funding to improve sustainable medication disposal, noting that medicines waste places “a huge financial and carbon burden on the NHS”.
It has called on the pharmaceutical industry to provide readily available information about the environmental impact of medicines.
The manifesto is endorsed by other Scottish healthcare bodies including the British Dental Association in Scotland, the Royal College of Anaesthetists and the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.
Laura Wilson, director for Scotland at the RPS, said: “As medicines experts, pharmacists have unique insight into how medicines can be used more sustainably and safely which would not only reduce impact on the environment but also provide better outcomes for patients.
“It is vital that the next Scottish government works with health professional leadership bodies and Royal Colleges to tackle medicines waste, enable green social prescribing initiatives and increase the amount of information available to allow more sustainable prescribing decisions to be made,” she added.
In 2023, NHS Scotland became the first health service in the world to stop purchasing desflurane, a high carbon-footprint anaesthetic gas for use in hospital theatres.
Read more: ‘Net zero — progress on reducing the environmental impact of medicines’
