Positively Green

Clean Air Day takes place every year on 18th June to highlight the health risks that poor air quality poses. By cleaning up our air, we can all benefit from immediate and lasting health improvements, and help ensure that future generations can live happier, healthier lives.

Derriford Hospital Theatres have made a simple but meaningful change to the way we prepare patients’ skin before surgery. We’ve moved from single‑use ChloraPrep applicators to Prevantics Red, a bottled antiseptic solution that uses the same trusted ingredients recommended by national guidelines.

In healthcare, even small changes can make a big impact. At Derriford Hospital, that change is happening through a growing initiative in our theatres, a project dedicated to reducing waste and increasing the recycling of single‑use surgical equipment...

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!