15 May 2024, for immediate publication.

Manchester Hospital Trust prescribes new antidote

to remedy plastic waste 

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, designer of the first reusable bottle made in the UK from locally-sourced single-use bottles, and MFT's facilities management partner, Sodexo.

ABOVE: (from L-R) Georgia Bell of co-cre8, Damian Sleep of Sodexo and Sara Haile of 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 water¹are 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 bottlesand 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. 

***ENDS***

Notes to Editors:

Contact:Nigel Couzens at: nigel@barkingdogcommunications.co.uk or call on: 0333 900 6800 / 07867 987307.

References: 1 Greenpeace UK and the Environmental Investigation Agency ‘Checking Out on Plastics III' report 2021.

Links to download images:  co-cre8 and Sodexo team  Close up of hydration station

About Honest

Honest is an ethical brand owned by circular economy experts, co-cre8. Honest launched in 2022 with a mission to provide stylish, reusable products that create value from waste, are locally made and represent a completely circular story. 

From the many years' experience designing and implementing recycling programmes, including the world-leading Simply Cups cup recycling scheme, co-cre8 now have a unique understanding of how to both create and maintain consumer engagement and increase material collected.

As demonstrated by the Honest Bottle, co-cre8 also has the ability to turn these materials back into beautifully designed, functional products that perfectly demonstrates the success of recycling programmes

honestbottle.com

co-cre8.earth

About Sodexo

Founded in Marseille in 1966 by Pierre Bellon, Sodexo is the global leader in sustainable food and valued experiences at every moment in life: learn, work, heal and play. The Group stands out for its independence, its founding family shareholding and its responsible business model.

Thanks to its two activities of Food and Facilities Management Services, Sodexo meets all the challenges of everyday life with a dual goal: to improve the quality of life of our employees and those we serve, and contribute to the economic, social and environmental progress in the communities where we operate.

In the UK and Ireland Sodexo employs around 30,000 people, and partners with clients in many sectors across business and industry; schools and universities; sports and leisure; energy and resources; government and agencies; healthcare; justice and defence.

uk.sodexo.com