ESTRO 2025 - Abstract Book

S2226

Interdisciplinary – Global health

ESTRO 2025

Purpose/Objective: Our Dutch healthcare sector is responsible for around 7% of all greenhouse gas emissions [1]. The government is aiming for health organisations to be carbon net zero by 2050 [2]. One of the priorities is to reduce carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) by encouraging more sustainable travel. Flying to the ESTRO conference yearly is not sustainable. Therefore, we decided to visualize the CO 2 emissions for traveling to ESTRO conferences over the past 5 years. Both for creating awareness and helping our colleagues to make more sustainable travel decisions. Moreover, we wondered what these emissions would be if the ESTRO conference had not taken place in Glasgow in 2024 but elsewhere. Material/Methods: For the five past ESTRO venue locations, the kg CO 2 emission traveling from The Hague was calculated. Traveling by car is 0.087 kg CO 2 emission/km for an average Dutch car [3]. The kg CO 2 emission of the train and airplanes were calculated by using greentripper [4]. Before the COVID pandemic flying too ESTRO was standard in our department, therefore we compared our department CO 2 emission with the CO 2 emission of using an airplane as the main transportation method. The option to follow ESTRO online in 2021 was also taken into consideration. Finaly, three locations, all easily accessible by public transport, were compared with the ESTRO venue location in Glasgow. Results: Table 1 shows the results of the kg CO 2 emission for all different types of transportation to the five different locations. Over the past 5 years, the change in travel methods of our staff members already resulted in an average reduction of CO 2 emissions of 36% (range 0-66). Due to a strike in 2023, we had to travel back by plane instead of using the train. If only the train had been used, we would have reduced 14% more.

Traveling by plane from Amsterdam to Paris, London or Brussels compared to Glasgow in 2024 would reduce our carbon footprint by 42%, 51% or 78% respectively.

Conclusion: Driven by the enthusiasm of individual team members our department reduced more than 30% CO 2 on average over the past three years. By creating awareness, the CO 2 emission could even be decreased further. To reduce the CO 2 footprint of the ESTRO members we expect that ESTRO will take accessibility by public transport into account, when finding a new conference location. The latter also based on the number of ESTRO participants per country.

Keywords: Carbon footprint, sustainable travel

References: 1. https://www.rivm.nl/en/news/new-calculation-method-reveals-environmental-impact-of-healthcare sector#:~:text=Total%20contribution%3A%207%25,scientific%20basis%20for%20these%20estimates. 2. https://www.greendealduurzamezorg.nl/green-deal-thema-s/co2-reductie/ 3. https://www.acea.auto/figure/average-co2-emissions-from-new-passenger-cars-by-eu-country/ 4. https://www.greentripper.org/