Tork manufacturer, Essity, is dedicated to providing sustainable hygiene products and services in all its markets. Sales Manager Liam Mynes explains how the company is going that extra mile to achieve sustainable outcomes in healthcare.
In October 2020, NHS England became the world’s first health service to commit to reaching carbon Net Zero. Within a year, the body had managed to reduce emissions by the amount equivalent to that required to power 1.1 million homes annually. And in July 2022, the NHS became the first health system to embed Net Zero into its legislation.
Going green is a clear part of the ethos of our National Health Service. Essity is supporting this drive in every way it can by helping the NHS to reduce its environmental impact throughout the value chain. The company’s aim is to provide the NHS with the most sustainable hygiene products and services on the market in a bid to reduce waste and lower carbon footprints. But it also intends to go that extra mile by providing comprehensive training for staff and managers.
Essity Sustainability and Tender Specialist, Lydia Brant will be speaking at the Infection Prevention Society’s annual conference, to be held in Birmingham from 23rd-25th September. She will focus on “Providing sustainable hygiene solutions in partnership with healthcare providers” and will highlight the efforts of Tork to reduce environmental impact along the value chain, in line with Essity’s science-based targets. The company’s four sustainability pillars are: materials and packaging; use and waste; carbon, and hygiene for all.
Ninety per cent of the packaging materials used in Essity’s hygiene products is now made from renewable resources, such as paper or cardboard, while 100 per cent of its plastic packaging will be recyclable by 2025. It also aims to be using 30 per cent recycled content in its plastic packaging by next year.
All the company’s systems are designed to control usage and reduce waste via one-at a-time dispensing. For example, Tork soap dispensers give out one controlled shot of soap at a time and the refills are leak-free to prevent any of the product going to waste. Refills come in bottles that collapse as the soap is used in order to reduce the volume of material going into the recycling facility.Tork dispensers for soap have also been certified as being easy to use, even for children and the elderly, while 99 per cent of the ingredients of Tork Clarity Foam Soap are biodegradable and come from natural origins.1 The product is quick to foam, which results in a 35 per cent reduction in water consumption,2 and its ingredients have been formulated to have a lower impact on aquatic life.3
C-fold towels were once the standard hand drying medium in hospitals, but these can lead to a great deal of waste. It is difficult to take out only one towel at a time from a C-fold dispenser, so most users will extract a clump of towels. The unwanted products will then be discarded and wasted, driving up costs while having a negative environmental impact.
All hand towel dispensers should, therefore, be designed to give out only one sheet of paper at a time to help to reduce paper waste. For example, the Tork PeakServe® ContinuousTM Hand Towel Dispenser gives out sheets of paper singly so that washroom users are discouraged from taking out more than they need. The dispenser holds up to 2,100 towels, which means it is particularly suitable for general hospital washrooms attended by both patients and visitors.
The Tork Matic® Hand Hand Towel Roll is ideal for use in washrooms and wash stations used by healthcare staff because the soft towel will prevent chapping and soreness, even with frequent use. Again, the dispenser has been designed to give out only one towel at a time.
Hospitals can achieve further sustainability gains by changing their toilet roll systems. Jumbo rolls are often provided in large institutions because these ensure a long-lasting supply of paper. However, it is all too easy for the user to tear off an extra-long strip of paper from a jumbo roll which leads to over-consumption and potentially blocked toilets as well. And it can be hard for the cleaner to predict when the paper is likely to run out, which means that he or she might be tempted to change a roll before it is entirely empty. As a result, the remainder will be discarded and ultimately wasted.
The Tork SmartOne® Twin Mini Toilet Roll System reduces consumption up to 40 per cent compared with jumbo roll dispensers since it delivers the paper one sheet at a time. This means less paper enters the system with each flush, which minimises the risk of pipe blockages. Alternatively, the Tork Coreless Mid-size Toilet Roll Dispenser reduces carbon footprint by 11 per cent compared with conventional toilet paper systems since there is no core to throw away after use.
To help meet carbon targets, a number of key Tork washroom dispensers for soap, toilet tissue and hand towels have now been certified as carbon neutral.
Certified products include the Tork SmartOne Toilet Paper Dispenser; the Tork PeakServe Continuous Hand Towel Dispenser; the Tork Coreless Midsize toilet paper system and Tork soap dispensers.
Essity has reduced carbon emissions for these dispensers by using certified renewable electricity during their production and offsetting the remaining carbon emissions via investments in certified climate projects with ClimatePartner.
Supported projects include the supply of clean drinking water in Cambodia, the provision of energy-efficient cooking stoves in India and forest protection activities in Indonesia. A total of 27 Tork dispensers are now certified carbon neutral.
The last of the four pillars – hygiene for all – is particularly crucial in healthcare, since the company aims to create a safe environment for employees and patients, while also helping to reduce healthcare-associated infections. As part of the “hygiene for all” commitment, Essity has launched a new learning management platform to improve the adoption of hygiene standards in hospitals and healthcare facilities.
The Tork learning management system improves access to free training for healthcare staff, while also enabling managers to assign and track necessary learnings. Training has been a key element of Essity’s healthcare delivery for the past five years and it has been operating two award-winning courses during that period. Tork Clean Hands Training invites users into a digital world where they are confronted with a series of scenarios in which hand hygiene needs to be carried out, while Tork Interactive Clean Hospital provides training modules to make life easier for healthcare cleaners and facility managers.
The programme is free to use and allows healthcare managers to improve training access and completion rates, as well as providing professionals with the opportunity to deepen their understanding of hand hygiene and environmental cleaning in an interactive way. The modules are designed to engage and inspire healthcare and cleaning professionals to meet best-in-class standards for hygiene. Environmental cleaning, hand hygiene and other trainings are now available in up to 27 languages via www.tork.co.uk
“We recognise that maintaining hand hygiene and environmental cleaning is complex and it can be challenging for healthcare staff to manage amidst their already busy and demanding schedules,” says Liam “We are excited to offer healthcare facilities and hospitals an easier and free way to train their staff, increase productivity and improve time management which, in turn, allows healthcare professionals to focus on providing the best patient care.”
Visit the Tork stand at IPS 2024 to find out more.
tork.co.uk/healthcaretrainings
References
1. According to ISO 16128
2. Compared to Tork Mildly Scented Foam Soap
3. Based upon the EU Ecolabel, CDV (Critical Dilution Volume) related to toxicity to aquatic organisms is below specified limits and is 2 times lower than the Tork Mild foam soap formula
