The government has launched what it has described as a ‘major crackdown’ on waste in the NHS.

The new strategy – the Design for Life Roadmap – sets out 30 actions to help the health service reduce the number of single-use medical devices and its reliance on product imports from overseas.

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) welcomed the strategy, noting that it aligns with the call made in its sustainability policy for a shift from a linear economy – where products are manufactured, used, and discarded – to a circular one, where products or their components can be repurposed.

And Community Pharmacy England (CPE) said it shared the government's ambition to reduce the healthcare industry’s impact on the environment.

As part of the plan, the government has pledged to work with companies to encourage the production of more sustainable products and to support training for NHS staff on how to use them.

According to the Department of Health and Social Care, disposable medical devices ‘substantially contribute to the 156,000 tonnes of clinical waste that the NHS produces every year in England alone’.

And it said its roadmap ‘paves the way to slashing this waste and maximising reuse, remanufacture and recycling in the NHS’.

The government said it will support companies to ‘safely remanufacture’ what were previously single-use items, and committed to changing procurement rules to ‘incentivise reusable products’.

A key part of the strategy highlights plans to create a training and skills framework that would set out ‘how the sector will design and deliver education geared towards promoting circularity in healthcare’.

‘Through national bodies such as DHSC and NHS services enabling expert bodies such as the royal colleges, efforts can be made to implement targeted training to drive a culture of circularity and sustainability within all professions,’ it said.

Health and social care secretary Wes Streeting said: ‘The NHS is broken. It is the mission of this government to get it back on its feet, and we can’t afford a single penny going to waste.’

He added: ‘Every year, millions of expensive medical devices are chucked in the bin after being used just once.

‘We are going to work closely with our medical technology industry, to eliminate waste and support homegrown MedTech and equipment.’

RPS president Professor Claire Anderson told The Pharmacist: 'While single-use plastics are widespread in healthcare and pharmacy, we know that pharmacy teams are working hard to minimise their usage.'

And she said the RPS's Green Pharmacy Toolkit, which will launch in 2025, 'will offer additional support and guidance for pharmacists, helping them eliminate avoidable single-use items and ensure the appropriate use of multi-compartment compliance aids'.

'Additionally, we advocate for a greater supply of environmentally friendly alternatives for plastic products used in medication dispensing, such as medicine spoons, cups, oral syringes, and compliance aids,' she added.

'Although these alternatives are not yet widely available, we’re hopeful that they will become accessible in the near future.

'Our sustainability policy also calls for circular economy approach to inhaler recycling so that the gases can be extracted, cleaned and reused, the precision metal components and plastic would also be recycled and reused.'

Meanwhile, Gordon Hockey, CPE director of legal, said that 'doing more to protect the environment, including reducing the healthcare industry’s impact on our planet', was an ambition shared by the negotiator.

'Only by finding more ways to reuse and recycle can we reduce waste and make the healthcare sector environmentally sustainable,' he told The Pharmacist.

He noted CPE's role as an advisory member of the Circularity in Primary Pharmaceutical Packaging Accelerator (CiPPPA) initiative, which connects stakeholders across the pharmaceutical supply chain to work together to develop and implement strategies for recycling primary pharmaceutical packaging.

'The group has similar overall aims to the Design for Life Roadmap, maintaining a patient-first approach whilst at the same time seeking to support the transition to net zero,' Mr Hockey said.

A version of this article first appeared on our sister site Nursing in Practice.