Footnotes

• Twitter @jamesbmaurice, @andrewrochford, @SarahTom123, @anjan_dhar6, @IBDdoc

• Collaborators We wish to thank the other members of the 'Green Endoscopy' group for their contribution to the ideas resulting in the development of this article: Keith Siau, William Stableforth, Emma Wesley, Swapna Gayam, Nitin Ahuja, Sandeep Sidhi and Andrew Veitch.

• Contributors JBM conceived and wrote the manuscript and designed figure 2. BH assisted in manuscript conception, designed figure 1, provided important intellectual content and critically reviewed the manuscript. AR wrote the section on dealing with the COVID-19 backlog and critically reviewed the manuscript for important intellectual content. SM, SS and AD provided important intellectual content and critically reviewed the manuscript.

• Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

• Competing interests JBM reports non-financial support from Norgine, personal fees and non-financial support from Intercept Pharma outside the submitted work. SS reports research grants from Takeda, Pfizer, Tillotts Pharma and AMGEN; speaker fees and or advisory board honoraria fees from Pfizer, Takeda, Tillotts, Pharmacocosmos, Jaansen, AMGEN and Abbvie outside the submitted work. BH reports grants from Fujifilm Europe, other from Ampersand Health, other from Surgease Medical outside the submitted work.

• Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.