Positively Green

On 21 May, the Sustainability team celebrated our Green Impact 2025/26 award winners at the Events Hall in the PGMC. Green Impact is a multi-award-winning employee engagement programme, provided by SOS-UK (Students Organising for Sustainability),(not-for-profit charity) that makes environmental and social sustainability achievable for everyone. Key to the programme is the electronic toolkit which has bespoke actions which teams can opt in to- the points teams earn then translate into Bronze, Silver and Gold awards.

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. Our Chief Executive Neil Macdonald attended to had out the awards which made them all the more special and an opportunity to showcase the amazing sustainability work our teams completed.

We started off with a nod towards our teams who are working towards Bronze. Some of these teams were tantalisingly close to a Bronze award, and Tavistock theatre in particular had lots of impressive stats to share from the sustainability work they had done. The following teams were recognised in this section:

• Green Endoscopy

• Main Outpatients

• Moorgate Major Trauma Ward

• Mustard Tree

• Neurosurgery

• Site services Catering Team

• Stonehouse Ward

• Southwest Imaging Training Academy (SWITA)

• Tavistock Theatre

• Tissue Viability

• UHP Print Room

We’re so proud to have had 12 award winners this year with 30 teams having signed up initially, smashing our target of 15. Bronze winners are as follows:

• Audiology

• Cellular pathology

• Combined Labs

• Digital and Innovation Services

• Discovery Library

• Neurophysiology (pictured below)

• Sexual Health in Plymouth (SHiP)

• Site Services

 

Our Gold winners deserve particular praise, having skipped Bronze and Silver and gone all the way to Gold! This represents a significant investment of time and energy in sustainable change, and we’re so pleased to have them as green champions at UHP. Gold winners are as follows:

• Dietetics

• Emergency Care Building Programme

• Plymouth CT (pictured below)

• Research and Development

We also celebrated teams and individuals who won special awards. First on the list was the Environmental Improvement Award which went to Audiology for their team's work to switch to rechargeable hearing aids. This represents an annual saving of around 20,000 kgCO₂eq. More about the Audiology project can be found on our blog entry.

Next up was our Sustainability Hero, and as we had so many fantastic participants this year, we couldn’t choose just one! Laura Martin was our first winner who was recognised for her linen reduction project. Laura’s linen reduction work is an excellent, evidence‑based QI project with clear environmental benefits and strong ward‑level adoption- well done!

Our second Sustainability Hero was Lisa Shainberg. Lisa’s ongoing personal leadership around waste stood out, as did the way she continues to influence day‑to‑day behaviour and culture. Congrats and thank you for your hard work!

The Research and Development Team won the Innovation for Engagement Award on account of their Sustainability and Support Hub on MS teams which demonstrates a genuinely innovative approach to engaging staff, increasing participation and embedding sustainability into everyday communication.

Finally, our Single Person Team award goes to Michelle Badmin who singlehandedly led the Cellular Pathology team to a Bronze award. Alongside this, she also registered her team to the ‘My Green Lab’ scheme and introduced a new sustainability apprenticeship. The Sustainability team will be supporting Michelle with My Green Lab now that they are signed up!

Whilst we’re so proud of what we have accomplished as a Trust already, we’re not about to stop there… Green Impact round two will be launching in September 2026 and it is our ambition to have a toolkit in every directorate. The Sustainability team are encouraging our existing Green Impact teams to keep the momentum going by completing a ‘Summer Focus’ project between now and the start of Green Impact round 2. This focus is designed to be a larger project that will take a few months to complete, such as getting reusable tourniquets into your department. The Sustainability team will be supporting our Green Impact teams with this at our upcoming Green Impact re-launch/feedback sessions taking place at the following dates and times:

• 25 June, 10:30am to 11:30am

• 1 July, 12pm to 1pm

• 9 July, 12pm to 1pm

We’re excited to support existing teams and new sign-ups for Green Impact 2026-2027! Any questions, please contact us on plh-tr.sustainability@nhs.net