Removing Plastics from the NHS - Webinar Round-Up
As the world’s capacity to cope with the fast-expanding manufacture of throwaway plastic items, we are also overwhelming the worlds’ ability to deal with them. Plastic pollution has now become one of the most urgent environmental concerns. As a nation health service, we must make important changes to limit our environmental effect. Our webinar ‘Removing Plastics from the NHS’ saw an expert panel of four come together to discuss their new and innovative products and processes which, if implemented across the breadth of the NHS, could help tackle our plastic problems.
We were introduced to the event by Georgia Halston, Co-Founder of Sustainability Partnerships, who gave us the low down on some facts and figures into how bad the plastic crisis has become. Including the shocking fact that due to PPE used in the pandemic we are running the risk of having more masks and latex gloves in the Mediterranean than jellyfish!
Rebecca Hammond, Marketing Director, Henosis Masks
Our first speaker was Rebecca Hammond, who provided insight into the harm traditional PPE masks can cause and how Henosis Masks have been working to tackle this. She told us about one NHS Trust in Lincolnshire, England who released data in the summer of 2020, demonstrating that across four hospitals in the trust 72,000 PPE items were used each day, including masks, aprons, gowns, gloves and eye protectors. Multiplied by the 226 similar trusts in the UK, gives an estimate of 10 million PPE items being used every single day.
“Three billion items of PPE were utilised between February and August 2020. This generated over 106,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalence, which equates to around 27,000 times the average individual’s daily carbon footprint.”
She explained how and why Henosis Masks was established in July 2020 by two, former printers Mark Bennett, and Brian Hammond. We heard Rebecca speak about the company’s journey on developing the product and reasoning behind choosing to go with a compostable mask rather than biodegradable to avoid products going to landfill.
Rebecca touched on the potentially harmful plastics and chemicals that can be inhaled due to wearing the masks for prolonged periods of time with chemicals such as carcinogen aniline, optical brighteners and formaldehyde, have been found in the surgical face masks. Whereas Henosis Masks are made from plant based materials with no nasty petrol based additives or chemicals. Rebecca also discussed the harm of re-wearing single use face masks which 56% of mask wearers in the UK admit to doing.
“German scientists did discover wearing the plastic face mask for long periods of time could result in potentially harmful microplastics and hazardous chemicals being inhaled.”
Stuart Hayward-Higham, Technical Development Director, SUEZ UK
“Behaviour is fundamental to success.”
Our second speaker was Stuart Hayward-Hingham from Suez, who work on recycling waste management. Stuart touched on how Suez aids companies in learning about materials end of life processes, logistics, policies, datasets and collaboration. He then went through some of the new innovative ideas and legislation appearing in the near future. A big take away from this section of Stuarts talk was the fact that the success will only come if everyone chips in and does their bit to ensure they are recycling properly.
“90% of everybody, has to do 90% of the right thing, 90% of the right time”
He detailed the NHS’ recycling performance statistics, where currently 15% of waste is going to landfill, 23% is being recycled and 62% is going to incineration. Whereas hospitals who are working with Suez are achieving up to 31% percent recycling. He explained the huge success that Suez have had with institutes like universities and the high levels of recycling they have helped them achieve, often focussing on not buying the plastics to begin with.
“If you don’t buy it, you don’t have to deal with it.”
Stuart did ensure to remind attendees that the NHS will never perform in line with the general public due to some of the waste needing to be incinerated for hygiene reasons.
Josephine Liang, Co-Founder & CEO, CauliBox
Our third speaker was Josephine Liang, as Co-Founder she provided detailed information surrounding their new product. Josephine began with an overview on why their product is so important with over 11 billion pieces of single use packaging waste being produced in the UK every year which usually ends up in landfill.
She spoke about how their system works through an app where people can order their food in their usual canteen and instead of a plastic box, the meal will be served in a CauliBox. After eating your meal, you can leave the empty box at one of their drop off points where they will be commercially sanitised and then put back into the system.
“Takeaway without the throw away!”
CauliBox are already working in collaboration with Barts Health and Royal London Hospital and they estimate that for every 10 vendors they take on, CauliBox with be able to save 1500 tonnes of Co2 annually, as each CauliBox can save 9.5 tonnes of Co2 emissions over 400 uses and each one can be used more than 400 times.
“Currently the industry is largely focused in increasing the use of compostable and biodegradable, but actually it’s better to focus on incorporating reusable so that we can reduce the amount of waste that’s produced in the first place.”
Oliver Borek, Chief Commercial Officer/Head of Business and Project Development, Mura Technology
“We’ll be able to take on over 20,000 tonnes of waste plastics from the UK market and we will be expanding that facility to 80,000 tonnes over the coming years and we will effectively replace the incineration of waste plastics, which is the most common form of disposal today.”
Our final speaker of the webinar was Oliver Borek, who joined us to talk about the uses of chemical recycling. He began with an introduction on how chemical recycling plays an important role in a stronger developed circular economy, due to the degrading of recycled plastics when they are manually recycled. Mura uses a unique process which sets them apart from other companies in the industry.
Oliver spoke about how plastic is counterintuitive due to the money and energy put into the products for them to just be thrown away and end up in the ocean. He also explained how there is so much energy within plastic that it is often actually too much for incinerators and therefore we should be trying to move away from this method of disposal.
Mura have licenced their technology, via one of their partners, one of the preeminent engineering firms in the world KBR and have made it available on a global basis to all those people looking to use the technology to build their own facilities.
“The plastic waste generated by the NHS is actually very very high-quality plastic, we would view it as rocket fuel for our plants. We would love the opportunity to discuss ways of bringing that plastic waste via the NHS waste collection partners to our sites as we develop them to recycle this back into virgin polymeric material which can be used to generate new plastics or other hydrocarbon-based materials.”
This webinar discussed how new and innovative products could aid the NHS in reducing the plastic used and better manage their plastic waste. Examining alternatives and enacting change within our NHS will require a collaborative approach and the exchange of ideas. If you would like more information, please contact us here.