Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT) has launched a new initiative to reduce single-use water bottles, installing hydration stations at two high-footfall locations at two of its hospitals that dispense free water refills for visitors and staff using their own reusable drinks vessel.
The installation, reportedly the UK public sector’s first of a dispensing unit of its kind, has been made possible through a collaboration between MFT, Honest – designer of what is said to be the UK’s first reusable bottle made from locally-sourced single-use bottles, and MFT's facilities management partner, Sodexo.
The hydration stations are located in main atria of the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital and St Mary’s Hospital. Both units dispense free tap water with the option to upgrade to triple filtered ‘super chilled’ water, starting at a small charge of £0.45, or carbonated water for £0.55, thereby serving ‘bottled water quality’, but without the single-use plastic waste. The stations will also provide the opportunity to purchase an Honest Bottle – a reusable bottle made from UK-sourced post-consumer recycled single-use bottles and easily recyclable at end of life – for customers without a suitable vessel to hand.
Damian Sleep, Business director at Sodexo Health & Care, said: “We are committed to doing all we can to reduce the use of single-use plastics, and this new initiative will help encourage visitors and staff to move away from buying single-use bottled water to reduce the amount of plastic in circulation. This will only be successful if we make it easy to refill bottles and create long-term behavioural change by increasing the uptake of reusables so we can then eliminate the sale of single-use plastic water bottles.”
Honest Sales and Marketing manager, Georgia Bell, explains that each 500 ml water refill eradicates, on average, 12 g of single-use plastic. She said: “During the six months the hydration stations have been in use, almost 50 kg of plastic waste has been avoided. Considering that over 2.5 billion units of bottled water are sold through UK retail outlets annually, there is an opportunity to eradicate 34,000 tonnes of single-use plastic, providing that water refill stations are in greater abundance than they are today. This is one small step that will facilitate this change"
The hydration stations are located in main atria of the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital and St Mary’s Hospital. Both dispense free tap water with the option to upgrade to triple filtered super chilled water, starting at a small charge of £0.45, or carbonated water for £0.55, thereby serving ‘bottled water quality’, but without the single-use plastic waste.
The initiative at Central Manchester Hospital is the first ‘activation’ from The Honest Project.
Pictured, from left to right, are Georgia Bell of co-cre8, and Damian Sleep and Sara Haile of Sodexo.
