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Care Opinion

Recycling

Posted By rainrs68

"Recycling"

About: Royal Hospital for Children (Glasgow) / Acute Receiving Unit (Ward 2c) Royal Hospital for Children (Glasgow) / Renal (Ward 3C)

(as a parent/guardian),

I recently spent some time in RHC with my infant son. From the time I arrived, I was alarmed by the lack of recycling going on in the hospital. I understand that clinical waste must be treated separately, however it was a real cause for concern that my meals were served on polystyrene plates, hot drinks and soup in polystyrene cups and that even when I was given plastic cups for water and my sandwich came in a plastic box, there wasn’t a recycling bin in the room. So it had to go in the general waste. The most astonishing thing was actually that the bottles, used to warm and feed expressed breast milk from or provide formula in, were thrown away. Not sterilised and reused. That’s not the teats, the actual bottles.

Not only must these practices be a colossal waste of money, but they are extremely harmful to the environment. We’ve just hosted COP26. Why is this still happening? In my opinion we need to do better.

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Responses

Response from Nicole McInally, Patient Experience and Public Involvement Project Manager, PEPI, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde 2 years ago
Nicole McInally
Patient Experience and Public Involvement Project Manager, PEPI,
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde

Submitted on 06/12/2021 at 16:43
Published on Care Opinion at 16:43

picture of Nicole McInally

Posted on behalf of Martin Johnston, Sustainability Manager, Estates and Facilities Directorate

Dear Rainrs68

Thank you for getting in touch via Care Opinion about recycling and sustainability within NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. I am aware of the lack of onsite waste segregation facilities at Royal Hospital for Children, this is one of our priorities with work commencing early next year to implement recycling infrastructure. Our contract provider does undertake some off site segregation, however not to the extent that we aspire to achieve. We have made significant progress at Stobhill Hospital and the New Victoria as our first sites to adopt waste segregation in clinical and non-clinical areas and our plan is to implement improvement by utilising current waste assets to increase recycling, starting with the Clyde Sector before the end of this financial year. Medium term we will invest in new recycling facilities and roll this out Board wide.

We are reviewing how best to implement suitable recycling facilities across Royal Hospital for Children and our larger sites, and how to configure our operational arrangements to accommodate this action.

This multi-disciplinary approach will be coordinated by the Board Waste Manager and the Sustainability Manager within the Estates and Facilities Directorate.

I am glad you highlighted single use items as well, as this is currently part of a waste minimisation review. We plan to reduce the use of throwaway cups and single use plastic as part of a resource use review with our procurement department in spring 2022 to reduce our single use waste in catering.

This is part of our wider approach to Sustainable Development. Our cross cutting Sustainability Governance Group and associated working groups will establish benchmarks, agree targets, set policy, develop strategy and oversee progress and delivery covering all Board Directorates and operations that contribute to our sustainable development, climate change and net zero ambitions.

I trust this information is helpful, however please do not hesitate to contact me on 0141 451 1663 or email Martin.Johnston@ggc.scot.nhs.uk should you require any additional information.

Regards

Martin

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Response from Coral McGowan, Patient Services Manager, Women & Children's Services, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde 2 years ago
Coral McGowan
Patient Services Manager, Women & Children's Services,
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde

Submitted on 06/12/2021 at 18:18
Published on Care Opinion at 18:18

picture of Coral McGowan

Dear Rainrs68,

Thank you so much for your very helpful feedback.

The team here at RHC will strongly support and adopt all recycling and sustainable energy initiatives - and we can't wait to get going. Behind the scenes many of our team members do undertake their own recycling activities where we are allowed to do so (for example, we can recycle our own waste) and we've had lots of great ideas from children and staff as to how we can do so much better.

We are collectively delighted to see progress in this area and with the support of all our service users and colleagues, we will do much better in the future

Take care

Coral

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