Gaelan Komen
Health Policy and Research Manager, Policy Connect
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick
Tasked to ‘reform or die’, the case for developing a circular NHS — one that eliminates waste while keeping products in their highest-value state — has become an existential imperative.
With tightening purse strings, the typical household might look to make the best use of the goods they have. Despite enduring budget issues, such thriftiness has long not been true for the NHS: plastics used in the NHS for example are repurposed at a rate around 10 times less than average household waste. In the NHS, ‘linear’ healthcare is ingrained, as single-use devices are used as a standard, and unused surgical products are often simply thrown away out of habit.
Advantages of circular healthcare
With millions of different products and procedures to make circular, this will be no mean feat, though the UKRI National Circular Economy Research Hub this year spotlighted several encouraging cases already in practice. Remanufactured catheters, for example, can halve both costs and carbon emissions, while reusable PPE cuts waste and makes supply more reliable.
Reusable PPE cuts waste and
makes supply more reliable.
Teaching circular behaviours
Scaling these solutions up requires a cultural overhaul in the NHS, as sustainability is routinely sidelined by misplaced concerns around the quality and cost of care. Pioneering trusts such as the UCL Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust are showing how effective leadership can achieve change.
Alongside its 2020 green plan and 2023 net-zero strategy, the trust has set up a sustainability board comprising leaders from across medical disciplines. It has also developed a staff engagement structure to report successes and make sustainable healthcare business-as-usual in all practices.
These innovations in management have led to quick successes. These include the steep reduction of greenhouse gas-intensive anaesthetic gases; the elimination of waste bound for landfills; and a new waste recovery programme to repurpose metals and plastics in devices.
Shifting the linear healthcare paradigm
The UCL Trust’s model of leadership shows how we can achieve the necessary paradigm shift to circular healthcare, in time for the Government’s ambitious 2045 deadline to remove single-use devices from the NHS where possible. Health leaders can make an essential first step to providing a positive vision for sustainable healthcare through the forthcoming long-term strategy for the NHS.
Those interested in this topic are encouraged to participate in a forthcoming inquiry. Policy Connect will be chairing sustainable healthcare practices, run through the All-Party Parliamentary Groups on Sustainable Resources and Health.
