A hospital in Scotland has become a pioneer by collecting rainwater and recycling it for use in laundry.
St John’s Hospital which is located in Livingston has set up a system for collecting rainwater which lets the rainwater that falls on the nineteen thousand square metre roof be harvested and utilised by the laundry department.
The project, which will ensure that the laundry department uses thirty per cent less mains water, has secured the hospital a Healthy Working Lives Gold Award, which aims to encourage organisations to make their work environments healthier for their employees.
The rainwater collected at St John’s Hospital is stored in tanks and it then undergoes a filtration process to make it suitable for use in the laundry department, which is the hospital’s heaviest water user as over ten million items are cleaned annually.
The hospital’s estates manager Bill Mooney, revealed that the idea for the rainwater harvesting scheme came about because they were searching for innovative ways of conserving resources at the hospital.
The amount of the harvested rainwater which can be used in the laundry department depends on the amount of rainfall received since the capacity of the storage tanks is not big enough. In January for instance, fifty nine per cent of the water used in the laundry department came from rain, while in February, it was only twenty six per cent.
The project’s success has made the hospital’s environmental team consider other ways of decreasing the pressure that is imposed on the mains tap water.
|
|
