Get involved
Stationery amnesty to help promote reuse and reduce waste
Trust: Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust
Location: All sites across Sussex
What's the idea?
Nearly every workspace has that cupboard where unused items pile up, discarded. In another corner of the Trust, teams are buying those very items, not realising there’s a surplus elsewhere. In the first instance, money is sitting there doing nothing; in the second money is being spent unnecessarily. It is money we could be spending on patient care, and we haven’t even mentioned the wasted carbon emissions in all this!
A stationery amnesty gathers in all the unwanted items that teams have and promotes their availability to other teams. At SCFT they used a reuse network called Warp It to advertise the items that were up for grabs, making it easy for staff to share what was available, and nab what they needed.
How you could implement a similar idea
If you’d like to have a stationery amnesty where you work it just takes a bit of planning and collaboration.
Pick a date to launch and run the amnesty for up to a month. Any longer and people forget to get involved.
Design a poster, and some communications to promote your amnesty, perhaps your comms team can support you with this, or at least offer some guidance.
Think about how to share what is available, and how people can collect what they would like to reuse from elsewhere, could your Trust sign up for something like Warp It? Try talking to your estates and facilities waste team to explore this idea. Other ways to promote the unwanted items might be via staff notice boards, or online forums.
Don’t forget to measure what you save and celebrate your success!
Resources
If you’re interested in reducing waste where you work check out these links for more info that may help.
Sussex Community use Warp It to help redistribute items that are no longer needed in other parts of the Trust, but you don’t need to be a member of Warp It to access some useful tips to promote reuse and reduce waste, the Warp It blog section is brimming with good ideas.
Read this handy 4 step guide to running a stationery amnesty, it is office focused but could be adapted for use in clinical spaces
The Care Without Carbon difference
Cost savings
Reducing carbon
Promoting reuse
