Greenifying the healthcare routine: Learnings from bottom-up green medical activism in the Netherlands

Human health relies on planetary health. Therefore, a transition is required to an ecologically-resilient and ecologically-friendly society, the healthcare sector included. To successfully complete this transition, imagination, knowledge, and implementation challenges need to be overcome. This chapter demonstrates how these challenges can be addressed by green bottom-up medical activism. Three case examples from green medical activism by healthcare professionals from the Netherlands are discussed within their context: the Dutch Green Health Alliance, GReen hEalthcare EducatioN for a hEalthy futurRe (GREENER), and the National Network of the Green Operating Room. Key common learnings from these examples are that the initiatives: (1) are multidisciplinary and united efforts, (2) do not wait for the perfect solutions to arise but get started with the available information and flexibly adapt to new insights, and (3) are strongly driven by evidence-based idealism. These learnings may inspire initiatives in other contexts to successfully catalyse the transition to sustainable healthcare systems and planetary health.