NHS buys 600m disposable plastic cups in just 5 years
THE NHS has bought a ‘staggering’ 600 million disposable plastic cups over the past five years.
The health service’s use of the throwaway items is ‘out of control’, critics said yesterday.
Many of the cups end up in landfill or dropped as litter – polluting our streets, countryside and seas.
A Freedom of Information request has revealed that NHS trusts in England have bought more than 600 million cups since 2013, but the true figure is likely to be much higher as only 174 out of 223 trusts answered the question.
One London trust, Guy’s and St Thomas’, bought almost 30 million cups over the five-year period. The 609,830,335 disposable cups bought over five years is the equivalent of more than 334,000 a day. It comes as the Daily Mail leads the way in the battle against plastic pollution with its Turn the Tide on Plastic campaign.
Greenpeace UK said the NHS figures demonstrated ‘just how out of control our relationship with single- use plastic has become’.
Cups are used across the health service, from waiting rooms to wards, but some trusts are not even able to identify how many disposable cups they are buying.
A total of 223 NHS acute, mental health and community provider trusts were asked by the Press Association to supply information on the number of disposable drinking cups they had bought in each year for the past five years.
Of those, 196 responded, but six have been omitted from the data due to discrepancies. Twenty-seven trusts – including some large acute hospitals – are yet to respond and 16 said they did not hold the information requested.
Disposable cups are used across the NHS for hot drinks, cold drinks and in dispensing medicines. While some can be readily recycled, others are considerably harder to re-use – such as plastic-lined coffee cups or polystyrene.
In some settings there will be clinical reasons behind the use of single-use cups – such as avoiding glass in some mental health wards.
Louise Edge, of Greenpeace UK, said: ‘We all know we’re using far too much throwaway plastic, but these huge figures demonstrate just how out of control our relationship with single-use plastic has become.
‘In the last five years the health service has used half a billion disposable cups – they can’t all be captured and recycled, so it’s time for the Government to step in and help suppliers find viable solutions.’
Dr Sue Kinsey, of the Marine Conservation Society, added: ‘If it really is an impossibility to wash cups, at the very least, the service should move away from using polystyrene, which is not easily recyclable and move to a system where cups are collected and recycled.’
Former Liberal Democrat health minister Norman Lamb said: ‘ NHS leaders should crack down on these wasteful purchases by encouraging the use of reusable cups.’
Dr Nick Scriven, of the Society for Acute Medicine, said: ‘Aside from the harsh environmental impact of such vast numbers, we also have to consider the great inefficiencies of such huge amounts of waste.’ A spokesman for Guy’s and St Thomas’ said: ‘Guy’s and St Thomas’ is one of the biggest trusts in the country and includes a large dental hospital where a high number of plastic cups are used in a clinical setting. The figures provided also include all disposable cups used and sold in the trust’s many catering outlets.
‘As an organisation, we are committed to providing the most sustainable healthcare services possible. We have a number of initiatives which aim to reduce the number of disposable cups that we use.’
Justin Madders, Labour’s health spokesman, said: ‘This is a staggering example of waste in the NHS.
‘The NHS plays an important role in securing a sustainable future for generations to come and I hope the Secretary of State will intervene to ensure the health service is not shirking its responsibilities.
‘Implementing a target to reduce disposable cup waste is a necessary start.’