Mapping Greener HealthcareMapping Greener Healthcare

Waste - improving behaviours, driving comlpience and reduing costs

The project has 6 key objectives;

1. To Drive a reduction in waste volumes; Reducing Confidential waste tonnage through correct segregation, Reducing clinical waste through correct segregation of domestic waste out of this stream and reducing domestic waste from improved recycling
2. To Drive a reduction in waste costs; Reducing contract costs though £/tonne reduction* and eliminating Landfill tax
3. Improving compliance
4. Decreasing our environmental impact;
   1. Achieving zero waste to landfill
   2. Reducing our carbon footprint from waste
   3. Introducing segregated recycling
5. To support the Trusts CSR ethos; supporting charities and local/national initiatives
6. To Drive cultural change

In order to achieve these benefits we have re-written our waste contract and re-tendered the package to ensure best value for money. We have achieved zero waste to landfill by redirecting our streams out of landfill e.g. all of our domestic waste goes to an RDF (refuse Derived Fuels) site for re-use into fuel pellets, all of our furniture waste is reclaimed, reused where possible and recycled, all of our paper and cardboard waste is segregated out and recycled etc. In order to drive the cultural change and improve compliance and correct segregation we have partnered with QTS who offer a full on-site auditing programme which includes face to face training an education as to the importance of correctly segregating the waste streams. By installing new equipment as part of the contract we have been able to ensure less collections and therefore lower road miles associated with our waste. The road miles for all of our waste streams is also logged and measured to allow us to make improvements in the future. We are also working with our supplies to improve their vehicle specs over time and look at alternative treatment options for our waste which may be more environmentally beneficial, as part of this we are currently looking at rolling out composting within our kitchen areas.