GP Footprint Reporter ^TM provides you with the first step in a carbon management process, helping you to rapidly establish a baseline for your Practice's greenhouse gas emissions using readily available data.

To save time and help you get the most from the software, it is important to read the GP Footprint Reporter^TM Quick Start Guide, which will help identify how to use software and how to collect the information you will need to collect to establish your baseline footprint.

Of course, carbon footprinting is just one part of the journey towards lowering your impact. The diagram on the right illustrates the role that carbon footprinting plays in a programme of carbon management.

Once you have established a baseline carbon footprint using GP Footprint Reporter, you need to determine where you want to be. Target setting is a crucial step in the process, and there are some resources available on this website to help you to set a target.

Armed with a baseline carbon footprint and a set of targets, GP surgery staff can focus on key 'hot-spots' within the carbon footprint and focus upon these for emissions reductions. There are some free resources available to GPs from the Campaign for Greener Healthcare, which allow health professionals to work through action planning processes. There are also targeted training courses on offer. Visit this page to learn more.

Once you've read the GP Footprint Reporter Quick-Start Guide and you feel you're ready to start footprinting, you can login to the GP Footprint Reporter software here.

How can I conduct travel surveys?

If you've read the GP Footprint Reporter Quick-Start Guide, and want to choose the more detailed option for capturing your transport footprint, Best Foot Forward has prepared some templates for you to use.

For staff commuting:

• Ask each of your staff to fill in this spreadsheet, and return it to you. The sheet automatically generates Footprint Reporter-ready data that staff member, which you can then enter into GP Footprint Reporter.

For patient travel:

• Conduct a one week patient travel survey, by printing copies of this paper-based template, and using them to collect information from your patients over a seven day period.
  
• At the end of the week, add the results of all of your paper survey responses together, and them into this calculator, which uses some simple assumptions to automatically generate data regarding a full year's patient travel for you to enter into GP Footprint Reporter.

What is a carbon footprint?

If you want to understand more about carbon footprints, and the differences between control and influence, visit this page.