Waste Management
Environmental Services & Sustainability
NTH Solutions has its own dedicated Environmental Services & Sustainability Team to support our ambition, and that of our Trust, to create a greener environment and support our local community. All activity is delivered in line with the Trust’s Green Plan, which is approved at Board level.
If you think of our hospitals and community-based services as producing waste similar to that of a small town, we see everything from apple cores to Zimmer Frames, and everything in between! We have eight main waste streams which are:
- Black bags – domestic waste
- Tiger bags – non-infectious, recognisable health care waste
- Orange bags – infectious or potentially infectious clinical waste (no chemical or medical contamination)
- Blue-lidded boxes/Sharps boxes – non-hazardous medical waste for incineration
- Yellow bags – infectious clinical waste, for incineration
- Red bags/boxes – anatomical waste for incineration
- Purple bags/boxes – hazardous cytotoxic/cytostatic medicines for high heat incineration
- Yellow sharps – used needles and sharp implements
We aim to sterilise our own clinical waste in due course, as well as be able to treat our own offensive and domestic waste output.
We save an average of
800kg
of food a week going to landfill per week through our Eco Shop system
We saw a
33%
average monthly increase in recyclable waste across nine months of the 2024/25 financial year
Recycling
We actively recycle as much as we can that is bought to our waste yards to discard. In order to promote a green, circular economy, we regularly save items such as paintings, furniture, homeware and other items that we fix and get back in to circulation. Not only does this reduce waste potentially being sent to landfill, it also saves monetary spend on buying new.
NTH Solutions operates two dedicated Swap Shops for workplace and household items, alongside a weekly Eco Shop service for colleagues. Click here to read more about our Responsibility and Sustainability agenda.
Food Waste
In April 2025, all UK hospitals were required to change the way they dispose of food waste in line with legislation. We are looking to establish an in-house food digestion system that will convert food waste into a compostable material, which in turn can be collected to produce energy and potentially create animal feed for cattle, thereby creating a circular economy.
