Colten Care is joining the anti plastic revolution
New Forest care home operator is removing more than a million single-use plastic items from its operations every year.
Good news for the overall "anti plastic" campaign in Lymington and the New Forest is that one of our higher "consuming" businesses is really taking this issue seriously.
Colten Care has consulted relatives, management and support departments of its care homes in the New Forest as part of the launch of a campaign aimed at eradicating throwaway plastic. Altogether, the use of 1,161,124 plastic items will be avoided each year by choosing more environmentally friendly materials.
Since the ‘Caring without plastic’ campaign began in April this year, residents, families, staff and suppliers have all got on board with ideas for action.
Twenty nursing and residential homes in Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire and Sussex, including five dementia-specific settings, are involved. Among them are homes in Brockenhurst, Lymington and New Milton.
Project lead Tim Wookey said: “Just weeks ago we became the first major provider in the UK’s private care home sector to begin a group-wide reduction of single-use plastic, not only on the clinical side but throughout all our activities.
“The response since then has been amazing and just goes to show that everyone, whatever their age or role, has a shared interest in protecting the environment.”
Yearly across the group, single-use plastic will be avoided by:
- laundry staff replacing 4,800 latex gloves with washable re-usable ones
- homes swapping 260,000 disposable drinking cups situated by water coolers with recyclable paper ones
- housekeepers using trolley containers to dispose of daily rubbish from residents’ rooms instead of 365,000 bin bags
- carers and catering staff replacing 499,000 single-use drinking straws with fully biodegradable ones
- housekeepers adopting antibacterial ‘magic water’ dispensers instead of 19,000 bottles of cleaning liquid sprays
In addition, Colten’s coffee suppliers now pack their fresh batch-roasted beans in biodegradable, non-plastic packaging, saving 1,300 plastic bags a year.
And Colten’s gardening team are adopting re-usable plant pots for their seedlings, saving 7,500 plant pots.
As well as initiatives at its homes, the family-owned provider is taking action on plastic at its Colten House head office in Ringwood. Fresh milk is now being delivered there in returnable glass bottles by a nearby family dairy business, B & B Dairies, avoiding the disposal of 1,500 plastic bottles a year. A new recycling system for paper waste at the office will see the replacement of 2,880 disposable clear plastic sacks with reusable fabric ones. And office staff have sourced an environmentally-friendly refill option for hand soap dispensers to avoid the need for 144 plastic ones every year.
Tim added: “Our commitment to avoid using more than a million pieces of plastic every year goes right across the board but it’s just the start. We will act on more good ideas and suggestions put forward by each home and roll them out more widely wherever we can. We are determined to make a positive difference, both to the planet and the local communities served by our homes.”
For more information on Caring without plastic, visit the campaign site at www.coltencare.co.uk/caring-without-plastic.
Find out more about Colten Care's New Forest homes:
Colten Care operates six residential nursing and care homes in the local area, including three in Lymington: Belmore Lodge, Court Lodge and dementia specialist Linden House. There are also homes in Brockenhurst (Woodpecker's), New Milton (Kingfisher's) and Mudeford (Avon Reach). Click on the links to find out more about each home...
It is estimated that 53 billion nurdles escape into the environment each year.
Refill New Forest launched in 2018 with the aim of tackling plastic pollution in the New Forest by making it easier to locate free tap water. This is part of a larger, national campaign now has over 15,000 refill points in the UK. 
TRANSITION Lymington
East Boldre Oral History (EBOH) has gathered and collated fascinating reflections which are spoken aloud by living residents of East Boldre who were born and brought up in the village, whose memories stretch back to encompass a social history which thanks to the pace of change seems to speak from long, long ago! 
The aims of the project which as you can imagine has taken some time in the making were to:
Introducing local historian Andrew Duncan and his new book Somerville's War - which features not only infamous spy and traitor Kim Philby but also Andrew's own mother, who along with other courageous women played an important role in the Second World War.
My family have lived at Beaulieu since the 1920s so I could rely on some local knowledge and insights. The main male character, Brigadier Maxwell, has a house on the Beaulieu River and is loosely based on my grandmother (yes, trans-gendered into a man) who also lived on the river. He is captain of the local sailing club, and although odd – he almost never speaks and when he does it’s an agonizingly slow drawl – no one suspects that he is leading a double life. Instead of going back to London each week to the War Office, he is doubling back unseen to help set up a Special Operations Executive (SOE) finishing school for spies, agents and saboteurs in the woods behind the Beaulieu village.
concentration camp and Ben Cowburn, hero of at least four dramatically successful missions.
The fictional possibilities of Maxwell and Philby seemed to me to be interesting, and gave me a start with the plot. To add some spice Maxwell’s daughter Leo, who is training to be an ATA (Air Transport Auxiliary) pilot is also having a romance with one of Maxwell’s trainees Labrador, a mysterious Pole, at the spy school. My mother (who died 1988) was one of the 160 ATA ‘Spitfire women’ and as far as I know the only one to have grown up in the New Forest, so I had some first-hand material for that strand too.