The examples below provide insight into how other Good or Outstanding rated services are succeeding in this area of inspection.
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Sustainability in care homes
St Monica Trust have produced this blog via The Queens Nursing Institute showcasing what they are doing to deliver more sustainable care. The blog highlights a series of practical ways that care homes can become more sustainable and help demonstrate to the CQC what you are doing including:
- Responding to hot weather needs
- Reducing water waste
- Reducing kitchen waste
- Minimising hazardous chemicals
- Reduce glove use
- Tackling medication waste
Read more about what the service is also doing here.
Care provider: St Monica Trust
Date published: October 2023
Staff and residents are the catalyst for focus on net-zero and sustainability for an awarding winning provider
Oakland Care have achieved a World Environment Award from the Green Organisation for delivering environmental best practice in their care homes. They are the first care home to achieve this accolade internationally and the award represents the numerous inclusive and effective green initiatives have also been introduced by the service.
The focus on environmentally sustainability was prompted by staff at the service and their strategy was shaped around the views of colleagues and residents. From establishing a sustainability committee to drive forward change to being the first group of care homes to be certified as net-zero, Oakland Care see their work on caring for the environment going hand in hand with delivering good care.
To learn more about what Oakland Care have done, watch this episode of the Care CEO Success Stories from Springup PR or visit Oakland Care's own website.
Care provider: Oakland Care
Date published: April 2023
Prioritising becoming carbon-neutral
In this three-minute audio clip from the Care Exchange podcast, Ben Ashton talks about how a priority when setting us their new service has focused on becoming carbon-neutral and offsetting this.
You can listen to the full podcast here. Access our whole Care Exchange series here.
Read more about this service here.
Care provider: Good Oaks Home Care
Date published: April 2023
How environmental sustainability focus attracts new staff
In this one-minute audio clip from the Care Exchange podcast, Ben Ashton talks about how focusing on environmental sustainability can help attract caring staff.
You can listen to the full podcast here. Access our whole Care Exchange series here.
Read more about this service here.
Care provider: Good Oaks Home Care
Date published: April 2023
Energy efficient heating
At a few of our homes we have installed Biomass heating systems which use a sustainable fuel source and produces low amounts of carbon. In addition to Biomass heating we have also installed Ground Source Heat Pumps. We currently have further plans for Air & Ground Source Heating to be installed at a number of Homes.
Biomass
Biomass boilers use biological matter as a source and using the heat which is output to use in heating systems.
These can include wood pellets, chips, logs and other biological materials which can be fed automatically, or by hand into the combustion chamber where they are ignited. We uses wood pellet boilers as a fuel source for our Biomass boilers, as this is a renewable source of energy.
Ground Source Heating
Ground Source Heat Pumps provide a renewable heating system which extracts the low temperature energy stored in the ground using buried pipework to compress the energy into a higher temperature.
We have chosen to install heat pumps just below the ground surface, this allows us to capture the warmth and be used as a renewable heat source to run our central heating systems around our Homes.
Air Source Heating
An Air Source Heat Pump captures the air circulating outside and increased the temperature which can provide heat and hot water. We have plans to implement Air Source Heat Pumps in the near future to provide more low carbon heating for our Homes.
Care provider: Anonymous
Date published: January 2023
Recycling & Waste
We are always looking to reduce our carbon foot print where possible. We have implemented recycling across our Homes and Head Office site, as well as more eco friendly methods of waste disposal and the use of re-usable products.
At our Head Office site we have now installed recycling bins for plastics, metals, cans and tins. E-Waste is recycled following the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) regulations.
We have also implemented the following across our sites;
- Collection of used cooking oils.
- Cardboard & mixed recycling bins at a number of sites
- Clinical waste bins at each site which are collected and disposed of appropriately.
- We have rolled out red re-usable laundry bags at our Homes to replace the plastic disposable bags. By implementing re-usable bags we are saving over 1.26 tonnes of polythene annually.
- Reducing our paper wastage via the use of technology and the implementation of Tablets to access our various systems.
Care provider: Anonymous
Date published: January 2023
Business Travel - Electric Vehicles
With the use of current technology this allows us to reduce staff travel via the use of virtual meetings. We also encourage our staff to travel via more active & eco friendly methods including walking, cycling, and public transport where possible.
We currently have a number of electric vehicles for use as pool cars at our Head Office site to assist with reducing our carbon emissions through staff travel.
Looking into the future we are also aiming to replace our current fleet with electric models to further reduce our carbon emissions.
To achieve this we have implemented the following:
- 11 electric vehicles for the Homes Managers and Operations.
- 1 electric vehicle for the Operations Director.
- Charging points installed at our Head Office site and Homes.
Care provider: Anonymous
Date published: January 2023
Dynamo Healthcare Training celebrates a year of being climate positive
After 12 months of taking positive action to support climate projects around the world, Dynamo Healthcare Training has offset 174.42 tonnes of CO2e.
Read more about this project here.
Care provider: Dynamo Healthcare Training
Date published: August 2022
Green Energy
We have chosen to implement solar panels at our Head Office site as well as at our Homes as they provide a source of green and renewable energy.
We have completed a number of solar panel installations across the group to provide more green energy and savings.
Further Solar Panel installations at our Homes are being planned for 2022 and onwards. As well as solar panels we have implemented the use of LED lighting; with our Head Office using 100% LED lighting, and 75% of our Homes using 50% LED lighting. We have also installed LED sensor lighting at a number of our Homes.
Care provider: Anonymous
Date published: January 2022