Carbon Literacy Action Day: what happens after the training?

At NHS LPP, we’ve been delivering Carbon Literacy training since November 2024. The Carbon Literacy healthcare toolkit combines half a day of eLearning with a facilitated half-day session, and everyone who becomes certified makes two carbon reduction pledges: one individual action and one involving a wider group. At least one of these has to be rooted in the workplace.

We’ve delivered eight sessions since that first course, and built a growing community of Carbon Literate colleagues across the organisation. But on any day championing action, there’s an important question to ask: what happens after the training?

Do the pledges actually have an impact?
Over the past few months, we’ve gone back to colleagues between six and 18 months after their training to ask what happened to the pledges they made. The results have been really encouraging.

Almost two-thirds of eligible colleagues responded to our follow-up, and more than 90% of the pledges reviewed had been fully or partially upheld. People also told us about additional changes they had made that weren’t in their original pledges at all.

As you might expect, we've heard about more walking and cycling, eating less meat, using refillable products and reducing unnecessary consumption. But we're also seeing the learning show up in how colleagues work.

Colleagues have talked about greater confidence discussing sustainability and thinking about carbon when making everyday decisions. Work-based pledges have led to teams reducing paper purchasing and unnecessary digital storage, and changing how information is shared. More significantly for NHS LPP, colleagues are bringing Carbon Literacy into procurement and contract management, including developing environmental KPIs and management information requirements that can help us understand and manage supplier performance.

This is important because NHS LPP's biggest potential carbon impact is our influence as a healthcare procurement organisation. Building Carbon Literacy amongst the people developing frameworks, managing contracts and working with suppliers means colleagues are better equipped to ask questions about emissions, identify carbon reduction opportunities and help NHS organisations and suppliers respond to the NHS net zero challenge.

Some of that impact is easy to measure now, but much of it will only become visible through future procurements. This is arguably the bigger opportunity: building carbon capability into the procurement workforce so that the learning creates ripple effects, influencing decisions long after the course itself has finished. Colleagues are increasingly recognising where NHS LPP can have influence and feeling better equipped to act on it.

Taking stock, and taking the next step
We’ve had some lovely recognition along the way. NHS LPP has achieved Silver Carbon Literate Organisation status, recognising that Carbon Literacy is becoming embedded in how we work rather than existing as a standalone training offer.

And very recently, our Carbon Literacy programme was shortlisted for the HCSA Sustainability and Social Value Excellence Award 2026.

Putting the nomination together gave me a rare opportunity to stop and look at what’s accumulated since that first course. When you’re busy delivering the next session or working on the next improvement, it’s surprisingly easy not to notice what all those individual pieces add up to.

Carbon Literacy Action Day therefore feels like a good moment both to celebrate that progress and to keep it moving.

Our CLAD sessions this week are bringing together those newer to NHS LPP with colleagues from partner organisations. I'm excited about growing a community of people who can spot where they can make a difference, have the confidence to start the conversation, and then do something about it.

Because ultimately, Action Day is just that: a day.

What matters is what we all do afterwards.