Single-use bottled water sales to be drastically reduced at Central Manchester Hospital through the provision of freely available drinking water
Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT) has launched a pioneering new initiative to reduce single-use water bottles. To encourage greater use of reusable drinks vessels, MFT has installed hydration stations at two high-footfall locations that dispense free water refills for visitors and staff using their own reusable drinks vessel.
This initiative, the first dispensing unit of its kind in the UK’s public sector, was made possible through a collaboration between MFT, Honest (a co-cre8 brand), designer of the first reusable bottle made in the UK from locally-sourced single-use bottles, and MFT’s facilities management partner, Sodexo.
Damian Sleep, Business Director at Sodexo Health & Care, says: “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 that we can then eliminate the sale of single-use plastic water bottles. This change represents a pioneering move on a site that typically has around 15,000 people on it daily”.
Honest Sales and Marketing Manager, Georgia Bell, says that “Each 500ml water refill eradicates, on average, 12g of single-use plastic. During the six months that the hydration stations have been in use almost 50kg of plastic waste has been avoided. Considering that more than 2.5 billion units of bottled water1 are sold through UK retail outlets each year, 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”
These unique hydration stations are located in main atriums 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 – the UK’s most sustainable reusable bottle which is made from UK sourced, post-consumer recycled single-use bottles and easily recyclable end of life – if the customer does not have a suitable vessel to hand.
The initiative at Central Manchester Hospital is the first activation from The Honest Project; Honest’s purposeful initiative to increase accessibility to publicly available drinking water and funded directly from sales of the Honest Bottle. This is also the first joint collaboration with Sodexo who, together, are already exploring more locations on this site, and other locations nationally, to support easy, quick and sustainable access to drinking water.
Sources: (1) Greenpeace UK and the Environmental Investigation Agency ‘Checking Out on Plastics III’ report 2021.
External news coverage: Honest Bottle, Products of Change, Health Business, Letsrecycle.com
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Keshari joined the co-cre8 team in 2022 and is responsible for the daily management of the business finances including financial reporting, purchase ledger, sales ledger and building relationships with customers and suppliers.
Wayne joined the co-cre8 team in 2022 and brings more than two decade’s worth of operational and commercial experience in the food service packaging and waste management sectors. With co-cre8’s portfolio of three business divisions, Wayne spreads his unrivalled skillset across multiple activities including for our Honest brand, internal Waste and Recycling Stations and System Design partnership projects. Wayne plays a key role in ensuring co-cre8’s operations are commercially viable, building and maintaining great relationships with suppliers, ensuring the smooth success of projects and keeping a smile on everyone’s face!
We welcomed Hannah to the team in January 2022 to grow and develop our Built Environment business division. Hannah brings a wealth of skills to the team including her fantastic communication and eye for detail.
Katie joined the team in December 2021, and plays a key role in supporting the Sales and Marketing Manager with all sales and marketing activity across the co-cre8 and Honest brands. Katie’s main responsibilities include pro-actively developing and reactively managing business-to-business sales opportunities, processing orders, general customer service and supporting with the creation and delivery of marketing campaigns.
Prior to co-founding co-cre8 in 2019, Peter spent 10 years as a UK Director of Closed Loop Environmental Solutions. With a passion for recycling and, as one of the UK’s leading exponents of promoting more circular solutions, Peter created and delivered many pioneering industry projects, most notably the Simply Cups scheme.
James has over 20 years’ experience in the waste and recycling industry. Starting with just one second hand truck, he founded and developed Simply Waste Solutions into a thriving, profitable business with a £35m turnover. In 2020, James decided that he was ready for new challenges and took Simply Waste to a successful exit, selling to Biffa plc for £40m.
Natalie joins the co-cre8 team with extensive knowledge and experience in waste, recycling, and circular business models, with her speciality in Finance. For the last 17 years, Natalie has worked, and was a shareholder, in a start-up, high growth to exit waste and recycling business, with 15 years spent at board level.
Georgia joined the team at co-cre8 in 2020 and is responsible for developing the business through creative thinking and effective communication via sales and marketing channels.
Rachel originally joined the co-cre8 team in 2019 as Customer Service Specialist for Simply Cups. Her role has since evolved, following the launch of the Built Environment range, where she now heads up all logistics including supplier liaising, order processing and general operations of the business.