About the Health and Social Care recycling guide

Welcome to our workplace Recycling Guide! ​

This guide is for the person responsible for managing waste at your health or social care workplace or site. If you’re a large organisation with multiple departments spread across multiple sites, such as a hospital trust, you may have a dedicated Waste Manager. If you’re a smaller site, such as a General Practice surgery, a residential care home or a dental surgery, your Site Manager or Operational Manager may be responsible for this.

This guide only deals with non-hazardous municipal waste, which NHS England commonly refers to as domestic waste. It doesn’t deal with how to manage other waste streams that may be generated by health and social care activities, such as clinical and dental, hazardous and offensive waste.

There’s plenty of guidance out there for the health and social care sector to help you manage these other waste streams:  

• The Chartered Institute of Waste Management has tools and resources specifically for Waste Managers and those responsible for managing waste in the health and social care sector.

• NHS England’s NHS Clinical Waste Strategy aims to reduce waste, generate financial and carbon savings, help deliver the NHS’s 2040 Net Zero ambition and minimise environmental harm for patients, staff and the wider community. To help healthcare providers meet the strategy’s aims, they’ve provided: 

  • The revised Health Technical Memorandum (HTM) 07-01: Safe and sustainable management of healthcare waste, gives you technical guidance and best practice for safely managing healthcare waste and ensuring it’s segregated appropriately, 

  • A tool to support trusts with their waste management decisions, improve waste segregation and help reduce waste-related carbon emissions. 

Good to know 

In December 2023 the Care Quality Commission (CQC) introduced the Single Assessment Framework. This applies to care providers, local authorities and integrated care systems.  

To tackle the issue of sustainability in the health and social care sector, the CQC has included a new "Environmental sustainability – sustainable development" criteria within the "well-led" evidence category of the framework. Providers must now show, with evidence, that “We understand any negative impact of our activities on the environment, and we strive to make a positive contribution in reducing it and support people to do the same.” 

Evidence may include your recycling efforts, as well as other sustainability activities.  

Good to know 

To assist Care Service managers in their journey towards sustainability and to help them document their actions and evidence impact under the Care Quality Commission (CQC) Single Assessment Framework, The Caring View (Mark Topps and Adam Purnell) and Hannah Montgomery, of Grace Cares CIC have collaborated to produce “Sustainability – The Care Managers Guide”.  

If you are a Care Manager/Registered Manager this resource aims to provide you with valuable insights and actionable tips to help you navigate the path toward a more sustainable and environmentally friendly approach within your services and help you to evidence your actions and impact under the CQC Single Assessment Framework, “Environmental sustainability – sustainable development” criteria that “We understand any negative impact of our activities on the environment, and we strive to make a positive contribution in reducing it and support people to do the same.” 

Follow the provided links for more information about The Caring View and about Grace Cares CIC