At NTH Solutions we’re keenly aware of our environmental responsibilities. As an estates and facilities company, we’re heavily involved in the supply and use of a range of cleaning chemicals and waste disposal, particularly of used PPE. With an average Trust disposing of around 72,000 items of used PPE every single day, this is a huge challenge for everyone involved in the process, not just in terms of logistics but also in terms of keeping carbon emissions down. When you consider the number of truckloads of used PPE leaving our Trust each week, combined with the amount of chemicals we consume in maintaining the cleanliness of our sites, the idea of becoming carbon neutral in the next ten years can seem daunting.
However, we’re determined to change that. We have installed machines at our hospitals in North Tees and Hartlepool that generate hypochlorous acid. This is the same chemical your body produces when you get sick and your white blood cells fight off an infection. It breaks down into salt and water, and has the same acidity as water. It is so gentle to the environment and to humans that it has no COSHH requirements (Control of Substances Hazardous to Health). Despite this, it is a microbe’s worst nightmare! Hypochlorous acid at the concentration our machines produce is more powerful than bleach – it kills C-diff, coronavirus, influenza, salmonella, and the list goes on. In fact, it kills 99.9999% of known pathogens (harmful microorganisms).
We are working alongside staff at North Tees Hospital to conduct a clinical trial to prove the efficacy of hypochlorous acid. Our goal is to make all other cleaning chemicals redundant, with our hospitals producing their own environmentally friendly solution. This will not only save the Trust a lot of money over time, it will also give us a sustainable replacement to an essential part of our toolkit.
We’re also championing reusable PPE, working with a British manufacturer to develop a fully managed service to supply, launder and recycle gowns and aprons. Each of our reusable gowns is fit for one hundred uses, so the amount of waste and emissions generated by our PPE use will fall dramatically if we swap out our disposable PPE for reusable. As we’re building this system, we’re also engaging with end users and the wider community to challenge some of the misconceptions people may have about using reusable PPE. We want to show people that reusable options are safe to use, affordable, and of higher quality than their disposable counterparts.
We have big plans for sustainability, not just for our Trust but for the entire region, so watch this space!
