S2E1 - Sustainability in Healthcare - Maarten van Aalst & Marianne Kooistra-Jonker

Green Talks

We're kicking off the second season of GreenTalks with an exciting special episode: Sustainability in Healthcare.
The impending climate crisis, and other environmental damages, have serious implications for our collective health. However, the very industry that is there to protect our health is big contributor to carbon emissions and pollution. How can we make sure that this impact is minimised, while not compromising the effectiveness of healthcare?

Maarten van Aalst, the Climate director of the Royal Dutch Meteorological institute, and ex-director of Red Cross Red Crescent climate centre, will tell us about the impacts of the climate crisis on health, both physical and mental. How can data help tackle the invisibility of heatwave deaths? What is the role of Loss & Damage funds? How do we talk about the climate crisis in a way that sounds the alarm, but controls anxiety?

Marianne Kooistra-Jonker is an alumni of University of Twente working in the medical sector, currently working on improving the sustainability of the field. She is the coordinator of a sustainability programme in the MST hospital in Enschede. How can hospitals lower their CO2 emissions, become more circular? How do we reduce the impact of medication on ground water and waste water? How do we make hospitals more diverse and inclusive?

02:05 - Maarten van Aalst
34:05 - Marianne Kooistra-Jonker

This special episode of GreenTalks was recorded at the TechMed event at the University of Twente. The final audio clip was provided by Merlijn Twaalfhoven and his website www.tegentijd.nl, which features creative ways (in Dutch) to get in touch with future generations.