Positively Green

The South West Imaging Training Academy (formally the Peninsula Radiology Academy ) staff are just one of UHP’s teams completing actions to make their department more sustainable. Located in the Plymouth Business Park just a 10 minute walk from Derriford Hospital, the Imaging Training Academy is a bespoke facility and was created with the specific purpose of delivering outstanding training.

Since the sustainability group was founded in 2022, they have taken on a number of projects whilst striving for green results. Led by their manager Sarah, they have:

• Secured additional recycling bins for the new function area

• Swapped from plastic drinking cups to paper drinking cups

• Made these paper drinking cups only available on request to encourage the use of water bottles

• Committed to only using plastic free teabags

• Started using DCHW as a sustainable lunch provider who aim to cycle to the building and use paper packaging

• Removed the coffee and vending machines to reduce the single use plastic consumed onsite

• Swapped from plastic hot drink cups to ceramic mugs

• Made sure to turn off all PAC's/PC's at the end of each day

• Become an exam centre for the RCR, which has eliminated travel to the London exam centre.

• Put in place wider use of MS teams to reduce regional travel, including a virtual teaching day on Thursdays

• Created a carbon baseline document to monitor progress

• Moved over to a digital diary in the place of paper

• Committed to regularly updating their Green Board with monthly resources from the sustainability team.

They continue to work on various other projects, including revitalising the green space on their site and publicising sustainability-focused Quality Improvement projects to their trainees.

To find out more, email the sustainability team at plh-tr.sustainability@nhs.net