Enliven’s Brightwater Home is on a journey to reduce, reuse and recycle.
Staff at the Palmerston North rest home have focused on being more sustainable in their day-to-day tasks.
Brightwater Home’s food services team leader, Lola Logan, says they have found ways of reducing waste in the kitchen, as well as some other areas of the home.
One of these includes making washable cloth hats for staff to wear into the kitchen rather than using one-use, disposable versions.
Anyone who goes into the kitchen at Brightwater Home is required to cover their hair for hygiene purposes.
“Now we don’t have to throw away hundreds of the disposable hats that used to fill up our rubbish bins,” Lola says.
“We also re-use bread bags for some things in the kitchen, so we no longer have to buy single-use plastic bags.”
In other areas, Lola says efforts have included re-using brown paper bags that their fruit and vegetables are delivered in as lining for some of the smaller rubbish bins around the home.
Disposable paper cups that used to be placed by water coolers around the rest home have also now been replaced with washable cups.
Lola says Brightwater Home’s sustainability journey is on-going, and she is always on the lookout for new ideas.
