Sustainability

At GWAAC we are the primary air ambulance for the whole of North Somerset, Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol, South Gloucestershire and Gloucestershire, including the Forest of Dean. We take our duty to provide an excellent service to outlying and rural communities very seriously, and the helicopter plays a key role in this. However, we only use the helicopter where it can be useful. When incidents are nearby or where we think that landing a helicopter would be difficult but using a car would be easy, we will take one of our three critical care cars. The helicopter is not used at night, and we use the cars instead. Overall, this means that we only use the helicopter for around a third of our missions, saving significant amounts of aviation fuel as a result. However, for some patients the helicopter makes the difference between life and death so we remain committed to operating one.

Our cars often drive hundreds of miles a day, at very high speeds along suitable roads. We can't predict when and where they will be going next. Whilst electric car technology is advancing fairly quickly, when we purchased our existing fleet in 2019 it didn't provide the range and speed we needed. We hope that the next generation of critical care cars will be fully electric.

The supply of Sustainable Aviation Fuel is currently limited, and there is not enough to provide for the entire aviation industry. It is also prohibitively expensive for GWAAC. We believe that the Sustainable Aviation Fuel available, and the financial costs associated with it, are best utilised at commercial airlines.

GWAAC needs to raise over £4m each year in order to fund our lifesaving service. Having branded items, or being able to purchase them for friends and family, is one of the ways that supporters demonstrate their loyalty to us, and how we promote our charity to others. We believe that if someone isn't buying a hoodie, or some coffee, or a toy from us then they will likely be buying it somewhere else instead. We would rather they bought it from us and helped us raise money in the process. We evaluate each branded item to ensure that it has use and replaces something else that a person might buy. We actively avoid creating things which don't have a useful function.

These are dealt with by third party companies. Most of the clothing is processed and sold abroad, in markets where free and fair trade is available. This is because the amount of people who wish to buy second hand clothing in the UK is smaller than the quantities of clothing we produce. 'End of life' garments are recycled into industrial wipes and cloths, mattress filling, insulation and new fibres.

We procure most of our clinical consumables and all of our drugs through South Western Ambulance Service and are therefore dependent on their success and the general NHS green procurement strategy in reducing the carbon footprint of our clinical processes. Whilst this is something we want to work on, this is one of the toughest things to make truly sustainable, and so we are focusing on other projects where we have more control and influence first.

We operate from a rented office in a shared building and are not responsible for our energy supplies here. The managing agent is aware of our desire to be more sustainable.

Our pool cars are not currently electric, as we do not have electric vehicle chargers at any of our premises at the moment. Our office and our shops are rented and it is challenging to install chargers there. However, we have grand plans to develop our airbase and move our office there, and this will include a large number of EV chargers in future.