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Recycling Week: how we're creating a sustainable NHS
The Recycle Now campaign’s 21st annual Recycling Week is taking place from 14 to 20 October 2024. This year’s theme is ‘Rescue Me’, which focuses on rescuing items that are being thrown away and reusing or repurposing them.
This is particularly important for the NHS as every year, millions of pounds worth of NHS community equipment, such as crutches and walking aids are misplaced, not returned or thrown away. In Suffolk alone (excluding Great Yarmouth and Waveney), between October 2023 and August 2024 almost 3,300 pieces of equipment were not returned. Returning, recycling and reusing this equipment helps the NHS save money, and reduces the environmental impact of providing this service.
Laura Rawlings, business development manager for the West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (WSFT), said: “We know that residents across the county are generously wanting to support their NHS services and one easy way to do this is to ensure that any unused community equipment that you may have around the house can be returned to us.
“We’re coming up to Christmas preparation time, so this is a good opportunity to clean out your spare rooms, sheds and conservatories, where a lot of the equipment is likely to be stored and forgotten about. There’s no better time to have a sort out and help the NHS!”
Increasing the amount of equipment that is returned means that it can be given out to others and continue helping patients during their recovery. Once returned, these items undergo thorough cleaning and safety inspections, which mean 85% of these pieces of equipment can be used several times over.
To make returning this equipment easier, the Trust works very closely with its community equipment service provider, Medequip, which is responsible for supplying equipment to patients’ homes in the community. Medequip has a dedicated telephone number and email address that local people can contact, and someone from their team will come out and collect the equipment.
There are also numerous drop-off points for this equipment across Suffolk, with work underway to expand the number of locations to make it as easy as possible to drop equipment off.
Laura added: “The collections are completely free and all you need to do is pick up the phone and let us know you have some NHS community equipment.”
In addition to these efforts, the Trust is making great progress to improve how it deals with the waste it generates. This month, the waste management team won two silver trophies in the Awards for Excellence in Waste Management for the NHS in England with their project to reduce clinical waste. They won in the ‘best reduction in clinical waste’ and ‘best reduction in carbon emissions’ categories.
The project involved the introduction of an offensive waste stream across surgical and medical wards, a project that aligns with the NHS Clinical Waste Strategy. This initiative greatly improved the Trust’s waste segregation processes, so that more of the Trust’s healthcare waste can be disposed of in a less carbon intensive way. Improving how it deals with waste in this way demonstrates the Trust’s commitment to both environmental sustainability and compliance.
Joss Ball, energy and waste manager, said: “It’s incredibly important that we reduce our carbon emissions and making small improvements in the way in which we get rid of our waste is a great way of achieving this, whether in the workplace or at home.
“We look forward to finding new ways to further reduce our carbon footprint, to help the NHS become a net zero organisation by 2040.”
Further information
To arrange for unused equipment to be picked up, please contact Medequip via 01473 351805 or email suffolk@medequip-uk.com.
The current drop-off locations are:
- West Suffolk Disability Resource Centre, 4 Bunting Road, IP32 7BX
- West Suffolk Hospital, Hardwick Lane, IP33 2QZ
- Ipswich Hospital, IP4 5PD
- Medequip Depot, Unit 31 Bluestem Road, IP3 9RR
- Leiston Wellbeing Hub, Waterloo Centre, IP16 4HE
- Emmaus, 216 Dales Road, Ipswich, IP1 4JY
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