The ongoing quest to make PPE more ‘sustainable’

Speaking at the Central Sterilising Club’s Annual Study Day last October, Paul Chivers, who heads up the PPE Innovation and Sustainability Team for NHS Supply Chain, explained some of the key initiatives his team has taken since its establishment in the pandemic’s early days to encourage development of more reusable PPE, and improve the sustainability and efficacy of such products already in use. Some of the developments, he explained, not only have the potential to substantially reduce the NHS’s procurement and waste disposal costs, but also to significantly cut carbon emissions.

Paul Chivers was introduced to delegates at the CSC Annual Study Day on 10 October last year by the Club’s Media Coordinator, Becky Hill, who in her professional role is Water Services Solutions manager for Healthcare at Veolia Water Technologies. She explained that with an engineering background, and extensive programme and project management experience, the speaker would be using his session, titled, ‘Innovation and sustainability in PPE decontamination’, to discuss how he and his team have successfully identified a reusable Type IIR mask, which has been piloted in line with NHS England’s National Infection Prevention and Control Manual for England, to support reusable mask safety. He had also – Becky Hill explained – been liaising closely with regulators to discuss standards and specifications for reprocessing PPE and some medical devices. 

Paul Chivers began: “So, as Becky said, I head up the PPE Innovation and Sustainability Team within NHS Supply Chain.