Recycling at Harplands Hospital

Business: Carillion Health

Date: April 2007

Location: Harplands Hospital, Stoke on Trent

Business benefits included positive employee involvement, exceeding Health recycling targets, cost savings for the Trust and Carillion and positive working relationship with the client.

Community benefits included encouragement of wildlife and less waste to landfill so better for the environment.

The recycling system was set up approximately five years ago by Christine Chapman, Facilities Duty Manager and she has been adding recycling streams ever since. This demonstrates real motivation and commitment as Carillion has no contractual responsibility for waste at the contract. She has shown that one person really can make a difference by raising staff awareness, motivating people, setting up and finding out about recycling.

To date everything including paper, cardboard, cans, plastic milk bottles, clothing, ink cartridges, fluorescent tubes, waste oil, left over paint and wood is recycled. The whole process took about four days to set up and get started and then about half a day a month to keep going. Clinical waste has been reduced from 13 to 6 containers and general waste reduced from 39 to 24 containers per week. This has given annual cost savings of £16,800 (including clinical), nearly 50% of the original costs. A recycling rate of 34% has been achieved (this vastly exceeds the average of 12% on other Health contracts). We never stop looking at what can be recycled - next for Harpland’s is a mulcher for garden waste, this goes to show that one person can make a huge difference. Find out what can be recycled locally - the council can help, some are free and others may pay you!