Another big win for green improvements
Dietician from RCHT receives Greener AHP Award at this year’s Chief Allied Health Professions Officer Awards
Faith Toogood is a dietitian at the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust. Earlier this year, Faith was shortlisted for the Greener AHP Award as part of the Chief Allied Health Professions Officer Awards 2024. Now, following a virtual award ceremony held on Thursday 10 October, we’re delighted to announce Faith has been named the overall winner in her shortlisted category.
Speaking about how the award came about, Faith said: “The vision for the project was to ensure all enteral feed bottles were recycled rather than incinerated in clinical waste. The project then grew as I started to explore the value of high-grade plastic and, after reaching out to Biffa, created a separate waste stream, which enables us, through segregation of these bottles at ward level, to divert them into a specialist reprocessing system that repurposes the used bottles into domestic milk bottles. This not only makes better use of a precious resource and reduces our carbon footprint at RCHT, but it benefits our hospitals financially. The project was then rolled out onto high usage wards and, once further funding has been sourced to support collection of these bottles, I hope to roll it out Trust-wide where the impact will be significant, both financially and environmentally.”
Faith’s project began on the Critical Care Unit, where she’s currently based. Now the project has been launched across 55 different wards at RCHT, and Faith is working on creating a national process with support from Biffa and Abbott, which can be rolled out nationally.
“The response from colleagues has been brilliant,” Faith adds. “Everyone has been incredibly supportive. The nurses on Critical Care have been instrumental in coming up with the process. We’re fortunate here in Cornwall that sustainability is quite high on everyone’s agenda. We seem to care about our oceans and how we live in this beautiful part of the world. Most people I speak to are keen to preserve it. The support and engagement have really helped in terms of growing the project, and it’s been both satisfying and a lot of fun.”
Faith led a greener recycling initiative that has already won the Complete Nutrition award for sustainability and was shortlisted and later awarded a bronze award for the Critical Care Unit as part of the NHS waste management awards. Asked what advice she would give to someone who has ideas around sustainability of their own, Faith adds: “Just do it. Be organised and get going, and, as this project has, it will evolve and change. But we all need to start somewhere.”