Positively Green

New bins now in place in Derriford's theatres are designed specifically to capture soft plastics and paper at the point of use in anaesthetic rooms. These areas generate large volumes of clean, recyclable materials that too often end up in clinical waste. By making recycling easy and accessible, we’re reducing unnecessary incineration, cutting carbon, and supporting more sustainable clinical practice.

On 21^st May, the Sustainability team celebrated our Green Impact 2025/26 award winners at the Events Hall in the PGMC. UHP’s award ceremony was well attended by our winning teams and their colleagues, and the atmosphere was as warm and positive as the sunshine outside! It was inspiring to recognise all the hard work that had gone into our teams’ toolkits in our first round of Green Impact, and Lucy our SOS UK project manager praised UHP for how much we had accomplished.

The Sustainability team look back to Greener Allied Health Professionals week at the end of April and celebrate their dieticians who have started to recycle nutritional supplement bottles...

We are really proud to announce our reusable curtains project came third in the Sustainable Healthcare Category in the NHS Excellence Awards! 

The UHP  S ustainability team recently visited Stonehouse Ward for an event to  promote their Green Wards Initiative. Stonehouse are the first ward to sign up to  the initiative, which  aims to encourage wards across UHP to incorporate sustainable actions  into their everyday practice.  There are a range of actions that wards need to  meet   in order to   achieve ‘Green Ward Status ’ ,  with  successful wards being awarded with a plaque to display on or outside of their ward to promote their green credentials.

Have you seen the patient information QR code trees around Derriford Hospital? These innovative vinyl tree stickers are designed to replace the majority of the paper information leaflets given out in wards and departments, thereby reducing the paper and energy consumption of the department they're in. 

With the help of the Discovery Library on L5, the Sustainability team has set up a uniform swap shop in an effort to avoid waste and save staff money. Staff filled our swap shop with donated pre-loved and unworn uniforms after an amnesty was announced in the Daily Email. Kirsty and Sophie from the Sustainability team then organised the uniforms roughly based on size and role, a job that was taken on by the volunteers- Kirsty and Sophie are so grateful for this help!

Read all about the vast amounts of recycling that our Waste Management team has processed since mid-September 2025!

The Audiology team at UHP are leading the way in sustainable change with their recent approved switch to rechargeable hearing aid batteries. This innovative investment will hugely reduce the waste, expenditure and CO₂ emissions of the department!

Derriford Hospital’s Emergency Department has today been awarded a Silver accreditation, as part of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine’s (RCEM) GreenED programme .