NHS Shared Business Services has launched its inaugural ‘Sustainable Healthcare Recycling & Waste Management’ framework to help the NHS meet its net zero targets.
The sustainability in healthcare dial has shifted from ‘nice to have’ to ‘essential’. On its path to net zero, the NHS has set an ambitious course to reduce carbon emissions produced from waste management by 80 per cent come 2032.
Trusts will be required to make the necessary step change in waste management practices, as laid out in NHS England’s clinical waste strategy. In its wake, NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS), has launched a new framework agreement with an offer that comprises pioneering sustainable waste management services and technologies.
Created in collaboration with leading NHS trusts, it has been designed to support the NHS as it works towards realising its 2040 carbon net zero goals.
Every year, the NHS produces approximately 156,000 tonnes of clinical waste - equivalent to over 400 loaded jumbo jets of waste - most of which is sent for high-temperature incineration.
This has a significant environmental impact and is associated with high running costs and carbon emissions.
Published on 7 March 2023, the NHS’s clinical waste strategy sets out NHS England’s ambition to transform the management of clinical waste by eliminating it where possible, finding innovative ways to reuse, and ensure waste is processed in the most cost effective, efficient, and sustainable way.
As part of this, it aims to deliver a 30 per cent reduction in carbon emissions from clinical waste segregation (clinical waste comprises items like needles, face masks, swabs, bandages, plasters that have had contact with bodily fluids), achieve a 50 per cent reduction in the carbon emissions produced from wider waste management by 2025/26 and 80 per cent reduction by 2028-32, by increasing sustainable, environmentally friendly waste management methods.
Improving resilience to waste could save £11 million in recurrent costs.
The strategy recognises the need to improve waste management infrastructure. This priority requires in-house waste processing capability and capacity to be developed at local, Integrated Care System and regional level to drive efficiencies, lower costs, reduce the use of incineration and improve its resilience to unforeseen increases in waste production. When fully implemented, the strategy is expected to help the NHS to save £11 million in recurrent revenue costs every year, over the next 10 years.
It is also expected to lead to a 30 per cent reduction in carbon emissions, helping to deliver the NHS’s ambition to be net zero in its estate by 2040, and minimise environmental harm to patients, staff and the wider community.
NHS trusts and healthcare organisations, therefore, are required to undertake the necessary work to accomplish this. This may well mean changing suppliers of clinical waste processing.
But that can be easier said than done. How are stretched procurement teams meant to understand the complexities of myriad waste management solutions available?
They may struggle to find the resource and capacity to undertake the market research as well as the ensuing procurement exercises required to access the latest solutions for sustainable waste management available.
Sustainable Healthcare Recycling & Waste Management
To support them, leading corporate services provider, NHS Shared Business Services has launched its inaugural ‘Sustainable Healthcare Recycling & Waste Management’ framework agreement, with an offer designed to support the NHS to meet its carbon net zero ambitions.
Free to access, the framework agreement has been developed in collaboration with Barts Health NHS Trust, Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust, Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust, Bolton NHS Foundation Trust and vendors of pioneering sustainable waste management services and technologies.
Its objective is to offer an easily accessible and compliant procurement route with the very latest sustainable waste management offerings, and to make sustainable management expertise easily obtainable.
NHS Shared Business Services procurement framework gives NHS organisations and the public sector access to 30 carefully vetted and selected vendors of innovative sustainable waste management solutions, and an agile means to quickly find, appoint and buy services and solutions compliantly, cost-effectively and at pace, hence supporting them to achieve their green plan goals.
Access to innovative technological solutions to reduce the carbon footprint
Comprising 26 Lots (service types), the framework agreement provides services centred around the principles in the waste hierarchy including: recycling and waste consultancy; sustainable asset management/waste re-purposing solutions and technology; clinical healthcare waste; reusable sharps; sanitary and washroom services; commercial and household waste; food recycling management services; hazardous waste; confidential recycling and waste destruction and disposal; and total recycling and waste management.
It also covers recycling and waste minimisation products like on site bio-digesters, aerobic waste digestors, compactors, and bins; and sustainable waste management technology like pyrolysis and microwave solutions.
Some notable innovative technological solutions that can be accessed via the framework agreement include: pyrolysis – decomposition through heating material to a high temperature without oxygen, releasing the energy trapped inside it which in turn can be used to heat the hospital estate.
It has huge potential to support them in their sustainable waste management; and aerobic bio-digesters, essentially a machine that creates a form of on-site accelerated composting and can be used to significantly reduce food waste volumes taken off-site. Also included is microwave treatment, which utilises a heat source to decontaminate various types of medical waste, which can then be managed without high-heat incineration.
The framework agreement provides customers with the ability to source all requirements as part of a single solution for recycling and waste management.
Choice of procurement routes
There are two routes to procuring services using the framework agreement – direct award or further competition.
The direct award route allows the purchaser – subject to procurement regulations - to award a contract directly to a supplier, enabling them to obtain solutions at speed.
The further competition process (sometimes called mini-competition) re-opens competition under the framework agreement. Procuring parties can ask suppliers to submit proposals and costings to help them select the most appropriate services and drive further efficiencies.
The framework agreement runs from 23 October 2023 until 22 October 2027, has a range of pricing options and capped rates have been secured with structured and controlled price review provisions from year two, to ensure users have cost certainty.
Best practice waste management reduces waste, improves compliance and delivers significant cost savings from lower waste volumes. This plays a crucial role in minimising harm to the environment and increasing resource utilisation, in turn reducing carbon generated from waste, and saving taxpayers money.
For more information, contact sbs.hello@nhs.net.
