Our service is dependent on getting our critical care team (a consultant grade doctor and specialist practitioner), with all the necessary equipment that you would normally find in an intensive care unit, to patients as quickly as possible. Having treated the patient at scene, they then need to be transferred rapidly to the right hospital so they can receive the urgent ongoing care they need - this is often a major trauma centre outside of the two counties we serve. The geography and road network of Dorset and Somerset means that rapid deployment of our critical care team to patients must be by air and requires a helicopter.

We are also committed to engaging daily with our emergency service colleagues through our outreach programme and supporting them by providing an enhanced care service using two outreach cars across the region (one in Dorset and one in Somerset). Our outreach and enhanced care service needs to move rapidly around a smaller geographic area and be able to reach almost anyway without pre-planned routes or stops, therefore the cars require to be equipped for blue-light response.

While we would never compromise our life-saving service, we recognise the responsibility to reduce our carbon footprint and environmental impact where we can.

Emergency Vehicles

Our life-saving service requires a helicopter, for which renewable fuel is not currently viable. Similarly, fully electric emergency response cars are not yet viable in our geographic area given the need for continuous availability and driving. We hope that renewable fuel and/or electric vehicles will become viable for emergency response use in future. In the meantime, we will explore the best way to carbon offset this necessary fuel use.

Travel to work

Electricity for charging of personal electric vehicles is available at our operational base. As we plan the base redevelopment, the provision of electric vehicle charging will be increased. The charity uses digital and online meeting tolls and encourages their use, enabling our people to join meetings and work collaboratively without the need for travel.

Recycling

Our offices at Wellington and Wimborne and our operational base at Henstridge have recycling areas for office and personal waste - we encourage our people to recycle where possible. Furthermore, the charity works with a textile recycling partner to provide recycling banks across Dorset and Somerset, enabling and encouraging the public to recycle textiles and clothes while supporting the charity.

Merchandise

We have reviewed all our fundraising merchandise and discontinued the sale of plastic and non-renewable items.

Reduce paper and packaging

The charity has moved to storing documents electronically wherever possible and to reducing printing and photocopying. All paper packaging used to mail our Beeline magazine is FSC and PEFC approved, meaning it is only sourced from sustainable paper supplies. It is easily recyclable with ordinary household recycling and requires less CO2 and chemical process to produce than most alternative packaging.

A new base to support our mission, people and the environment

We need and intend to redevelop our operational base in order to accommodate an expansion of our service and meet the needs of patients across in the region. In designing and building the new base, we will ensure that it:

• Creates efficient systems of work to optimise our response to patients in need 
• Is designed to best support the physical and mental wellbeing of our crews 
• Supports the recovery of patients who have been treated by our Critical Care Team 
• Is efficient in energy consumption and incorporates renewable energy generation where possible 
• Continues to use the groundwater of the marsh and rain to provide for aviation safety