Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust has hosted a series of Sustainability Roadshows to sign up ‘Green Champions’ at several of its healthcare sites. The roadshows took place on Sustainability Day – 27 March – and were a fantastic success.
At the Trust HQ, people came forward to make green pledges, ranging from composting their teabags to switching to an electric car, as well as signing up to be workplace sustainability representatives. At Ribbleton Hospital, a hospital for elderly patients with mental health needs including dementia, plans were made to plant a copse which will be visible from within the hospital, as well as being accessible to staff and patients.
Activities also took place at Guild Lodge, a mental health hospital near Preston. Here, two service users planted two trees at 2 o’clock as part of the NHS Forest’s 2@2 campaign. One of the service users summed things up in a nutshell, saying, “Mother Nature helps us, so we must help Mother Nature.”
Another service user planted up herb troughs, and two more people at the hospital have turned an unused patch of land into a vegetable and herb allotment in a matter of weeks.
Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust (now Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust) have recently received 300 trees from the NHS Forest, funded by The Great Outdoor Gym Company. The trust added a further 65 saplings, giving them 365 trees to plant – one for every day of the year. Many were snapped up on NHS Sustainability Day, and will be delivered via the trust’s normal postal rounds, so they don’t add any carbon miles in reaching their destinations.