This week is Recycle Week.
Victoria Gardens recently welcomed representatives from fellow Elysium North West Hospitals who came together to launch a North West Sustainability Group. Throughout the day the newly formed Group welcomed visitors from Angela Davies – Therapy Garden, Greenpeace , Liverpool City Council, Knowsley Council who shared knowledge and experience in all things sustainability.
We spoke with Jamie Devine, Victoria Gardens’ Sustainability representative and Champion, who told us more.
“Back in March 2023, at Victoria Gardens, we started a Sustainability Group. Since then, we’ve undertaken a range of different activities and initiatives focusing on sustainability.
“Since then I have been invited to undertake the ‘Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability Level 4 Apprenticeship’ which I have just started and which I am thrilled to do. The aim is to have a colleague from each region of the country undertake the apprenticeship and I cover the North West.
“Part of undertaking the apprenticeship is to develop a North West Sustainability Group which incorporates all of the north west services and, over the next three months, I will be attending the Governance meeting of every hospital in our region to share more about sustainability and how hospitals can get involved.
“The idea of the Sustainability Day here was to get a representative from every other north west hospital to come along and see for themselves what we have done here, share the framework we have developed and apply that in their own hospital setting.
“To help them get a real flavour of how involved we are in the community and how important a role community groups play in developing sustainability projects, I invited people from organisations I have worked with to come and speak on the day. We had an ecologist from Liverpool Council, Forest Rangers from Knowsley Council, representatives from Veola, Greenpeace and Keep Britain Tidy and someone from Liverpool Eco Garden.
“We were delighted to welcome so many colleagues from other hospitals and one of the highlights of the day was showing them the work that is underway in developing a 25 minute greenspace walk outside of Victoria Gardens. Research shows that being outside in green space for 25 minutes has a significant impact on improving mental health and I wanted to show them what was possible in using the space we have to help the people we support access it.
“We also held a ‘taster afternoon’ for vegan foods. As part of our sustainability activities we hold Meat Free Mondays and Jordan, our chef, created a vegan ‘pick and mix’ – that was amazing.
“The day was a great way to get more and more people involved in sustainability activities across our services and I’m looking forward to seeing how it might inspire different activities and projects across the North West.”