For National Healthcare Estates and Facilities Day, Sophie Underdown has shared what it’s like to work in her role…

Our compact team of four operates in a hybrid fashion, swapping between home, the Site Services office and offsite locations. On this particular day, Kirsty UHP’s Sustainability Manager and I travelled to Tavistock Hospital to chat to their theatre team about sustainability.

Once we arrived via car share, Kirsty and I delivered a presentation to the enthusiastic nurses and HCAs in theatres. We discussed how we could help them improve their waste segregation, streamline their pre-made theatre kits to reduce wastage and put together a hospital-wide team of eco-minded colleagues. After a tour of the hospital and its beautiful green spaces, we headed back to the office and followed up our visit with a recap email and an appreciative post on our socials featuring Sven the Sustainability Seal of Approval.

General enquiries into our sustainability inbox are varied and specific to departments across UHP. In recent weeks we have assisted Orthopaedics and Rheumatology to remove an unnecessary paper form which reduced wastage, carbon emissions and staff time. Enquiries on this particular day included staff asking where they could get a second-hand desk. I pointed them in the direction of Warp It, the swap and share site for internal items.

We’re great believers in making use of our green spaces in the sunshine, so we made our way to the benches to the right of the John Bull building for lunch followed by my 1:1. After spotting some bluebells and taking the time to post a photo of them on Choosing Greener, it was back to the office to meet with some of our Green Champions via teams and finish off a report on switching to recycled paper in the ED.

Catching the bus home, I’m minded to think how fortunate I am to have a job that allows me to exercise my passionate belief in protecting the environment. Each small sustainable action we do at work and at home helps!