Heartbeat: Putting our waste to good use
July 30, 2018
Eighteen months ago, Justin Mitchell, Assistant Director of Procurement, was looking for ways to recycle products that pile up across our Trust in tonnes. Rather than pay for a company to collect it and dump it in landfill, the aim was to process the waste in an environmentally friendly manner at zero cost.
Justin was then introduced to Tom O’Brien, from Trust-Reclaim Ltd who specialises in reducing NHS disposal costs through recycling and giving to communities. Justin liked the idea of squeezing out residue value from condemned stock and adding to people’s lives. This started an agreement with Trust-Reclaim Ltd initially just dealing with stock from scrap items held in the old laundry, but since then has grown into other projects.
Over the past year, Trust-Reclaim Ltd has collected over 200 tonnes of waste from our sites. By carrying out an up-cycling process which is sustainable and ethical – the Trust has made an income of £8k in the process.
“The process of working with a social enterprise to recycle our waste is a no brainer,” said Justin. “Not only are we helping the environment, the proceeds are going to good causes and we are also able to make this process as an income stream for the groups just by recycling in an ethical way.”
Good causes that have benefitted from our work with Trust-Reclaim Ltd include providing furniture to homeless people that are in the process of being rehoused, through charities such as the ‘Ladywood Furniture Project’ and ‘Langar Aid’. Proving this way of working is really adding social value at street level. Some containers, full of waste stock have even gone to help projects abroad in Sri Lanka, Syria and Yemen.
Justin said: “Recycling our scrap is just the tip of iceberg. As a large organisation we generate 1,000s of tonnes of waste every year. The procurement team are now working with teams across the Trust to help them realise the benefits that could be had by recycling ethically.”
Tom added: “We are able to provide recycling at zero cost as Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals has given us the opportunity to carry out a variety of recycling work. It’s great that the Trust is really beginning to embrace ethical recycling. There are so many opportunities that could help save the environment and help provide potential employment for local communities. Partnerships can be developed to help grow the Trust with other social enterprises that will help meet the organisation’s goal of becoming truly sustainable.”
The procurement team manages the governance and has an audit trail of all the waste that is taken off site by Trust-Reclaim Ltd including indemnity. Any profit made is paid directly to the cost centre code for that particular area.
To find out how your area can get involved please email Justin justin.mitchell@nhs.net