For Medequip, recycling is an integral part of the service we offer. It’s a comprehensive process, bringing together retrieving the equipment we provide when it is no longer required, cleaning and maintaining as appropriate, then reusing it to help keep people independent and safe in their own homes. It’s all about reducing waste, saving costs, and supporting environmental sustainability.
So how does that work on a daily basis, and how do we ensure we optimise our recycling strategy? Each of our community equipment services contracts around the country has specific KPI targets in terms of returns, recycling and reuse. When equipment is out in the community, it is the property of the partners, then when returned, it is credited back and becomes Medequip property again.
The benefits are not just financial. It means we have equipment is available for people when they need it, as well as facilitating important objectives like speedy hospital discharges. Alongside the cost saving benefits of not buying new, there are significant environmental benefits in reusing equipment successfully.
The importance of partnership in recycling
To achieve optimum results, it’s vital that that this is achieved at a partnership level between Medequip and its contracts. Our partners have extended engagement opportunities with local communities through their websites and social media platforms, so collaboration is key. We also share long term objectives such as net zero targets and aligning with their own commitments and promises.
All this work requires investment in continuous initiatives. We cooperate with household waste recycling centres in many of our contract areas to provide drop off points for equipment, simplifying the process for local people. We provide ‘amnesty bins’ in community and hospital locations, making it easy and convenient for people to return items of equipment when no longer required.
Whilst larger and more valuable equipment such as electrically operated beds and pressure care mattresses are tracked and collected from homes, we also run continuous campaigns to promote individuals to return and recycle, issuing banners and leaflets and creating website content.
Taking partnership a step further
In addition, in many contract areas we have successfully linked with other organisations where there is an overlap in operations and opportunities to collaborate to increase impact. In Staffordshire, we work closely with Grace Cares, an award-winning not-for-profit organisation who save, rejuvenate and sell care equipment, funding hardship grants and generating social value, providing activities for carers and older people.
Here, HWRCs accept all care equipment, with Medequip taking back contract items for reuse. Where it is unclear if equipment is contract or privately funded, the items are cleaned and refurbished by Medequip for Grace Cares to sell to raise funds for their work.
Our Medway team is now partnering with wHoo Cares, another established not-for-profit organisation looking after the health and well-being of residents of the Hoo Peninsula. Here, we are setting up a drop-off point designed not just to support the returns process but also to open the door to other mutually beneficial opportunities.
Beyond Medequip
When items are deemed beyond economical repair or reuse within the UK, Medequip enjoys long standing partnerships with established charities to donate suitable equipment to international communities in need. This approach ensures that equipment continues to provide value whilst reducing waste and supporting global health initiatives.
Headline recycling figures
In 2024, Medequip successfully credited back a total sum exceeding £100 million to our customers in the public sector through our recycling work.