As part of our contribution to environmental sustainability, Northern Health has purchased three Toyota Corolla Hatch Hybrids for the domiciliary home visit midwife (DOM) team.

The DOM team have to conduct an increasing amount of home visits in the northern growth corridor and actively use Northern Health fleet vehicles.

“As part of our contribution to our sustainability, we wanted to purchase some vehicles that had a positive environmental effect. The Corolla Hybrids burn less fuel and emit lower levels of carbon and are great cars for our staff to use,” said Basil Ireland, Chief Financial Officer.

“The cars are extremely economical, with a factory rated 4.2/litres per 100 km,” explained Dominic LaCaze, Supply Manager.

“Our current fleet has about 75 cars and Northern Health plans to buy hybrid when replacing cars. The only exception might be if the car is required to have additional boot capacity, as the hybrids don’t have large boots,” he added.

Some of the safety features of our hybrid cars include auto high beam, radar cruise control, eight-inch colour touchscreens and bi-LED headlights.

Dominic said our DOM staff are enjoying the cars, with some of the feedback so far including; “It’s a beautiful car to drive,” “The keyless entry and push button ignition start is really cool,” and “Knowing there are extra safety features like auto high beam, automatic emergency braking and lane departure alert makes us feel safer in doing our job.”

Northern Health wants to achieve the Victorian Government’s target of being net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

“It will be difficult to achieve, but we are making positive steps including increased recycling of waste, installation of solar panels to reduce energy consumption from the grid and fine tuning our building automation systems to ensure efficient use of energy,” Basil Ireland said.