Staff at The Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (RBCH) have received awards for reducing the Trust’s carbon footprint in 2015 and saving £19,000 for investment back into patient care.
The Trust is one of five in the UK that takes part in ‘Green Impact’, a national environmental awareness scheme run by the National Union of Students (NUS). The scheme sees universities and public organisations form teams focussed on improving different aspects of sustainability such as waste, water, travel, and energy.
More than 100 staff members divided into eight teams took part in RBCH’s Green Impact challenge in 2015, introducing green initiatives such as two sided printing and ‘switch off’ campaigns for lights.
Together, the teams saved the Trust more than £19,000 which will be reinvested into frontline patient care. Their efforts were rewarded with certificates and awards at a presentation lunch at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital on Thursday 14 January. The presentation was a particular cause for celebration with the Trust seeing Green Impact gold standard awards achieved for the first time in three years of taking part.
Staff in the Catering Department’s team won a gold standard Green Impact Award for progress in sourcing sustainable products from environmentally aware suppliers and separating food waste for compost, while the Estates and Risk Management Teams won a silver award for their innovative online reporting initiative ‘DatixWeb’, which saved the Trust 16,000 pieces of paper last year. The Ultrasound, X-ray, eForms IT and Patient Liaison teams all won bronze awards for their efforts to make their departments more sustainable.
The awards were presented by Trust Director of Operations Mark Titcomb, who said: “We are so proud of everything our staff have achieved through the Green Impact scheme in 2015. Not only have these staff members made a considerable contribution to the environment, the money they have saved the Trust can now be redirected back into frontline patient care.”
The Trust is now encouraging staff to take part in Green Impact 2016, and will be offering more personal support for busy clinical areas to encourage clinical staff to take part. The scheme will also be broadened to include staff health and well-being.
Sarah Muskett, Trust Sustainability Assistant, said: “Sustainability is so much broader than recycling and turning lights off. So we’ve joined forces with our Health and Wellbeing Department for Green Impact this year so we can include sustainable actions to improve staff wellbeing.
“We also have a new intranet site, providing a wealth of information, not just on Green Impact but on other RBCH sustainability projects and how staff can save money through sustainable actions at home.”
To find out more about Green Impact, please visit: www.green-impact.org.uk, or for further information about Green Impact at RBCH, please visit: www.rbch.nhs.uk.
