A thank you to patients on Global Recycling Day
This Global Recycling Day (18 March), we wanted to take a minute to say thank you to local people for playing their part in working together towards a greener NHS.
The NHS has a vision to deliver the world’s first net zero health service and respond to climate change, improving health now and for future generations.
This means improving healthcare while reducing harmful carbon emissions and investing in efforts that remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, recognising and understanding that climate change and human health are inextricably linked.
Across all aspects of healthcare, projects are being undertaken to work towards this goal. For the Southeast of England, the focus is on medicines, travel and transport, supply chain and procurement, estates and facilities and digital models of care. In all projects the patient is at the centre of any decisions made, recognising that what’s good for people is often good for the planet too.
An example of a project within the supply chain and procurement portfolio, is a walking aid returns initiative.
In 2021 Frimley Health Foundation Trust started to streamline the process of returning walking aids to their three main hospital sites at Frimley Park, Wexham Park and Heatherwood Hospital, with drop boxes placed close to the entrances.
This was in recognition of patients’ frustration when trying to return the aids, the cost of constantly having to provide new equipment whilst perfectly good walking aids remained in under stairs cupboards across Frimley and how reusing could reduce the environmental impact of the production process.
Over the years, this returns and recycling initiative has gone from strength to strength. In 2023 Heatherwood Hospital alone was able to save £12, 585.31 on walking aids by reusing equipment returned to them.
Already this year, the box at Heatherwood has taken in 509 crutches and 83 walking frames and the scheme has proved so successful that the Physio team has recently enlisted the support of volunteers to collect, clean and service the returned walking aids.
Ilze Clarke, Physio Assistant Practitioner at Heatherwood, told us: "I am very passionate about this project and am always looking at ways to increase patient awareness of the recycling scheme.
"We’re currently creating reminders to be displayed on the wards and discussing how we can include the subject in conversations during outpatients appointments. There may also be the chance to incorporate digital reminders on the Frimley health app or place a message in appointment letters, at an appropriate time according to the type of surgery a patient has had.”
Ilze finished with thanks to local people and one plea, she said:
“We’re very grateful for how patients have embraced the returns service but we do get unwanted or unsafe items returned to us which we then have to dispose of, or condemn at a cost to the trust. We’d like people to understand that we cannot take wheelchairs and that rusted or unsafe walking aids should be dispose of through other means. Please help us spread the message and if someone can’t bring their aids back perhaps you can offer to do that for them.”
To learn more about the ambitions within the Frimley Health and Care Green Plan visit https://fhac-archive.frimley.icb.nhs.uk/about-us/frimley-health-and-care-green-plan/