James Dixon

James Dixon is associate director of sustainability at Newcastle Hospitals and a Chartered Environmentalist with over 20 years of environmental sustainability experience. He worked for Newcastle City Council implementing environmental management systems before joining Newcastle Hospitals in 2010 as waste manager. He tripled their rate of recycling within a year, eliminated waste to landfill, reduced waste-related carbon emissions by over 75%, formed their Sustainable Healthcare Committee, and saved a cumulative $1.4 million In 2014, Dixon was promoted to head of department leading on delivery of the Sustainable Healthcare in Newcastle program. Under his stewardship, Newcastle Hospitals has earned a reputation for sustainable health care leadership. In 2018, he was awarded a fellowship of the Institute of Environmental Management & Assessment, the first NHS sustainability professional to do so. Dixon’s work to engage senior leaders in the importance of planetary health culminated in Newcastle Hospitals becoming the first health care organization in the world to publicly declare the climate emergency as a health emergency and commit to fast-tracking decarbonization of their services.