5 February 2010
A ground-breaking new initiative to raise awareness of how much waste is produced and how much energy is used at Epsom, Sutton and St Helier hospitals has been launched.
The Trust has unveiled ecoDriver, a system which monitors energy usage, how much money the Trust is spending on energy bills and how much waste we're producing. The information is shown on television screens across the sites for staff, patients and visitors to see. The system also offers handy tips and reminders about saving energy, helping to cut our projected annual energy bill of £2.8 million.
As the first hospital trust in the country to install ecoDriver, Chief Executive Samantha Jones welcomed the new system. Samantha said: "We all know that CO2 is having a devastating effect on the environment, and it's time to think about how we can all make a difference. By raising awareness of just how much electricity the Trust is using and by offering staff and patients energy saving advice, we hope to cut down our emissions and save energy.
"But it's not just the size of our carbon footprint that we hope to reduce. By saving energy, we can also save money on our bills and by doing that, we can invest even more money into providing the best possible care for our patients."
The Trust already has a number of energy saving initiatives in place, including upgrading our boiler controls to improve energy efficiency, replacing light fittings using new high-efficiency lighting and providing special recycling zones for glass, cans and plastic bottles.
In addition, the Trust's information technology (IT) team has installed new technology which turns all computers to hibernate when they are not in use. This is having a drastic impact on the Trust's energy use, especially when you consider that the Trust has 2,200 computers.
The Trust's energy expert, Rupert Hughes led the initiative to install ecoDriver. He said: "We're really pleased to have ecoDriver up and running. It's a great piece of equipment and we hope it will encourage people to turn lights off, recycle their rubbish and think more about the environment around them."
