Great Western Hospitals joins new partnership making healthcare more sustainable

Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has joined five other healthcare trusts across England, as part of the prestigious Circular Economy Healthcare Alliance.

The Alliance seeks to demonstrate a commitment to sustainability, by bringing together passionate organisations who can pave the way to a greener NHS.  

Together with University College London Hospitals, Cambridge University Hospitals, Imperial College Healthcare, University Hospitals Sussex and Chelsea and Westminster Hospitals, the Alliance’s joint statement declares:

“As part of our commitment to sustainability, our collaborative group of NHS trusts aims to reduce single-use medical equipment and consumables, reusing wherever it is clinically feasible and appropriate to do so.

“This will be reflected in our evaluation criteria for selecting products and suppliers through the procurement process, and through building skills, knowledge, and processes in our Trust to enable this transition.”   

There are three key areas of change that the Alliance is focusing on, with particular reference to plastic waste. This includes reducing unnecessary use of items, using reusable items over single-use and ensuring end-of-life items are returned for remanufacture or recycling.

Chelsey Green, Sustainability Officer, said: “Our staff can only provide the best healthcare if the world around us remains healthy.

“We know that single-use items in our healthcare settings are creating huge volumes of waste – around 440 tonnes a day across the whole of the NHS – which will start to create harm for the populations we serve.

“The Circular Economy Healthcare Alliance will ensure that we are reducing waste, and reusing and recycling far more than ever before.”

In recent months, the Trust has saved 27.4 tonnes of CO2e from reducing unnecessary use of gloves and over 2,800 wasted linen items from moving to twice weekly bedding changes where appropriate.

The Trust has also been selected as the first NHS England exemplar organisation for sustainable practices within infection prevention and control, and the second Trust in the country to achieve the Silver ‘Green ED’ accreditation, in recognition of all the work being done to reduce the carbon footprint.