Positively Green

Baby Loss Awareness Week (9 to 15 October) is a week for everyone in the baby loss community and beyond to come together to remember and commemorate our much-loved and missed babies. UHP is no exception to this annual reflection and are pleased to be able to offer the newly refurbished garden outside The Snowdrop Baby Bereavement Unit to families who need it.

The Sustainability Team are super excited to celebrate the launch of our Green Impact Programme! Green Impact is a sustainability accreditation programme for staff and students that rewards sustainable action within departments and teams. Teams from across the Trust are invited to form and work through our online toolkit to implement positive sustainability changes, and work towards an award. By taking part, staff can learn more about sustainability, lead on something outside of their day-to-day role, develop new skills, and make a real positive impact on sustainability. 

Starting this October, UHP will be rolling out electronic patient letters to those patients that have a Patient Knows Best (PKB) account. This means, rather than waiting for their letters to arrive in the post, patients will immediately receive their communications from the hospital on their electronic devices. This change has primarily been implemented to improve patient experience, but the environmental savings are also undeniable…

It’s that time of year again! We have refreshed our Annual Sustainability Report 2024/2025 to incorporate the work completed this year and our plans for the next.

The British Association of Urological Surgeons has put together a national snapshot audit for bladder cancer known as Environmental Lessons Learned and Applied (ELLA). This audit aims to assess current Bladder Cancer Pathways against a baseline and put forward recommendations on how the services could be decarbonised. UHP was one of the trusts who took part in this late 2024 audit, and the results indicate that UHP's pathway is second greenest pathway in the UK!

World Breastfeeding Week runs each year from 1st to 7th August to celebrate, promote and engage individuals in the topic of breastfeeding. The theme this year focuses on environment and climate change and has the tagline: ‘create sustainable support systems’. Encouraging and supporting any breastfeeding (where this is the preference of the family) helps reduce environmental harm and aligns with living sustainably within the planet’s ecological limits.

The Infection Prevention and Management Team (IPMT) have made waves in the reduction of non-sterile gloves used at University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust and have reported a reduction of approximately 630,000 gloves being used between 2023/24 and 2024/25, and a reduction of approximately 16,461 kgCO2e. 

A recent study of air pollution levels in and around Derriford Hospital has contributed towards University Hospital Plymouth NHS Trust’s objective of an ‘excellent’ score in the Clean Air Hospital Framework, as set out in its Green Plan.

Tavistock Hospital are lucky enough to have a Green Team headed up by Davina. The members of the team are all passionate about reducing the hospital’s impact on the environment and have achieved so much through sheer passion!  The Green Team consistently assess their practices daily to look for savings both financially and environmentally. 

Sophie, one of Plymouth’s Medical Students, has put together an exciting project whereby medical students are given reusable scrub hats during their time at the hospital.