The carbon footprint of French hospital ophthalmology consultations.

Background: France carbon footprint, with 604 million tons of CO equivalent (COeq) annual emissions, far exceeds the worldwide scientific specifications to not exceed 2 °C of warming in 2100. The healthcare sector is one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. The aim of this study is to quantify and evaluate the carbon footprint of the consultation activity of an ophthalmology department at a single institution in France.

Methods: The perimeter of the investigation included consultations and excluded the surgeries and the hospitalisation. We calculated the carbon footprint of a single day of practice in our scope of investigation. We included consumption of energy, patient travel, staff travel, pharmaceutics and medical devices purchases, computer hardware, biomedical equipment/exam materials, and waste. We used the official French public database of emission factors: Base Empreinte® of the Environmental and Energy Management Agency of France.

Results: The carbon footprint of a single day of our department was estimated at 1 688.65 kgCOeq. It represents an average of 9.28 kgCOeq per patient. Energy consumption contributed for 114.80 kgCOeq (6.8%), travel for 1324.76 kgCOeq (78.4%), pharmaceutics and medical devices for 208.33 kgCOeq (12.3%), equipment for 14.38 kgCOeq (0.9%) and waste for 26.38 kgCOeq (1.6%).

Conclusions: This study highlights the importance of patient travels, and possibly pharmaceutics, in the carbon footprint of hospital ophthalmology practice in France. More studies are needed to establish it at the national or international scale, as well as more carbon footprint analyses on products, especially those of high prices, to increase the accuracy of these studies.