Liam Hogg, Head of Waste & Resource NHS England, was the keynote speaker at a special one-day workshop designed to highlight Grundon’s approach to the NHS Carbon Strategy.
The event, held on 23 May at The Bull Hotel, Gerrards Cross attracted around 45 sustainability and facilities management professionals from NHS Trusts across the region.
Becky Lillywhite, Contract Manager – Clinical Waste at Grundon, said: “The event was very successful and we have had excellent feedback. Many attendees stayed on afterwards to talk to us in more detail and we have already had a number of enquiries, which just goes to show they are ready and willing to embrace new and more sustainable ways of working.”
The team took the audience through the benefits of Grundon’s managed waste service, explaining how it could help Trusts work towards the 60:20:20 waste segregation targets set as part of the NHS’s carbon strategy.
This led on to a discussion about environmental reporting, explaining how Grundon’s carbon measuring tools continue to evolve, helping customers with the drive towards carbon zero.
“The data we supply is critical in helping Trusts with their carbon reporting and enables them to see where successes are being achieved and where more work needs to be done. By working together, we can really make a difference.”
Becky Lillywhite
Contract Manager – Clinical Waste
The workshop covered a wide range of information – including insight into Grundon’s future development plans for expanding its healthcare and clinical waste services.
Reusable sharps containers
Attendees were given an exclusive insight into a new reusable sharps container service being launched next month (June) by Grundon, which included a preview of the Sharpak Zero™ container designed and manufactured by Inpress Precision.
A groundbreaking benefit of the Sharpak container is that it can be used up to 10 times – as it is emptied, sanitised and quality checked each time. The container is fitted with an identifying barcode which tracks the number of times it has been used; after its 10th use, it is granulated and reprocessed into a new sharps container. After 10 cycles of 10 uses, the plastic is granulated again and used in other products, so the plastic is never wasted.
Introducing a reusable sharps container service delivers dramatic carbon savings compared to more traditional single-use sharps containers. The Sharpak Zero is available to buy from Grundon or through the NHS supply chain and requires no change of process for the NHS facility.
The workshop also included an overview of Grundon’s recently-launched inhaler recycling service and a look at how the company tackles healthcare plastic recycling; as well as details of a soon-to-be-launched blue wrap recycling service.
Training
Training featured highly on the agenda, as Grundon’s Shauna Costley, Clinical Compliance & Sustainability Manager, explains: “At the moment, waste training in NHS Trusts is not mandatory and for busy professionals, such as doctors, nurses, porters and domestic staff, finding the time to voluntarily undertake waste training courses and presentations can be really hard.”
“It was clear from discussions that this is a stumbling block as, without understanding the importance of issues such why waste needs to be correctly segregated, it is difficult to achieve the best results.”
“Having recognised these challenges, we are developing an animated video which we will use when delivering training. At seven minutes, it will provide the key takeaway points of clinical waste management that are so important and we hope it will help fill a much-needed gap in waste education.”
Carbon savings
The day was also an opportunity to highlight Grundon’s own carbon saving success stories.
These included its ongoing journey towards reducing carbon miles for collections – investing around £6.5 million a year to further decarbonise its vehicle fleet – and its own carbon reduction success story, which has seen a reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions of over 70% since 2000, at the same time as growing the business by over 270% and doubling the number of employees.
Grundon is expanding its existing electric waste collection vehicle fleet in order to deliver zero emission waste collections for an increasing number of customers, with some vehicles powered directly by electricity generated from the customer waste it collects.
The day concluded with a Q&A session, followed by lunch and networking.
Comments from attendees:
Denise Pawley, Senior Operational Facilities Manager, Horton Hospital, Oxford University Hospitals: “Both Ange and I found it extremely useful and engaging and are looking forward to working with you and Grundon in the future.”
Maggie Skinner, Logistics and Environmental Manager, Estates & Facilities Department, West London NHS Trust: “I would like to say a big thank you to the whole team at Grundon for all the hard work and organisation for the NHS carbon strategy conference to make it a huge success today.”