Sheffield Teaching Hospitals wins national sustainability award
The Catering Team at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust has been announced as the winner of an NHS Sustainability Award, under the category of Staff Engagement.
This award recognises the efforts of the team in driving sustainability initiatives and environmental awareness to encourage staff to proactively make more environmentally friendly choices. The Catering Team have been selected as the winners of this award for their project to reduce the use of single-use plastics in all hospital catering retail units.
The Catering Team’s success is due to their collective ambition and leading progress in driving change, encouraging staff to consider the environmental impact of their food purchase choices and decision to use more sustainable options.
Head of Catering, Emma Wilson, said "The project to remove avoidable single-use plastics from our Catering Services has had an impressive impact in a short timescale thanks to the support of staff across the Trust. In the first year of the project, purchase of disposable cutlery reduced by 77.5%, plates by 43.1% and cups by 66.7%. The purchase of disposables has continued to reduce with a further reduction of 20% in 19/20 compared to the previous year."
The NHS Sustainability awards were established to encourage, benchmark and reward action on creating a more sustainable NHS. Winners were announced today to coincide with NHS Sustainability Day 2020. This year the ceremony took place online to minimise the environmental impact, saving a total of 1.86 tonnes of CO2e.
Despite facing adversity due to other priorities currently being faced at the hospital and across the UK, many staff have engaged with this campaign to continuously improve sustainability and together make a difference to reduce long-term environmental impacts.
Director of Strategy and Planning, Anne Gibbs, wanted to thank all staff who have made pro-active choices to be more sustainable.
She said "Winning this award is testament to the hard work of the catering team in planning this project and making continued progress in reducing single-use plastics. Thank you to the catering team for their commitment to this initiative, as well as all staff Trust-wide for making sustained changes and responsible choices resulting in positive impact on the environment. We are all very PROUD of the collective effort in this achievement."
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