Improving Recycling and Reducing Waste

We innovated Sort-At-Source to enable our nurses to recycle more easily.

Instead of walking to central recycling bins, nurses now sort paper and plastic waste directly on their medication trolleys using small attached recycling bins. This integrates recycling seamlessly into their daily routines.

With encouraging trial results showing a 47% increase in paper recycling and an over 230% increase in plastic recycling, we are progressively deploying this across all NUH wards by end-2025. This initiative will recover close to 24,000 kg of recyclable waste annually.

Watch the video below to learn more!

We moved towards a plastic-lite campus by:

• Phasing out small plastic bags at all pharmacies, cutting plastic use by over 50%
• Partnering with retail tenants to reduce plastic bag use and encourage customers to bring their own reusable bags
• Ceasing plastic bag provision for staff deskside bins, saving approximately 200,000 plastic bags annually

Eliminating paper bills

We stopped issuing paper bills for all our services, transitioning to the NUHS app, where patients can conveniently access their bills anytime, anywhere.

Going paperless for medical report requests

Requests for medical reports are now fully paperless. Patients, insurance companies, and lawyers now submit requests online, with staff processing them entirely digitally. We protect all information with passwords to secure patient data.

This initiative saves over 166,000 pieces of A4 paper, equivalent to 20 trees annually, and cuts approximately 833 kg of carbon dioxide emissions.