About our hospice

Sustainability at the hospice

The priority for us at Katharine House Hospice will always be to provide vital specialist palliative care for our patients and support their families, but we recognise that our activities and services can contribute to air pollution and climate change.

We are taking action to look for ways to minimise our impact on the world around us. We’ve been using the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals to guide us to reduce our impact and support a more sustainable world. Read on below to find out what action we’ve been putting into practice across our offices, grounds, shops and events.

Sustainable development goals infographic

> Our sustainability foundations
> In our offices
> In our grounds
> In our shops
> Our fundraising events
> What can you do to help?

Our sustainability foundations

We dedicated time and staff resource to a sustainability project funded by the Zurich Foundation.
We conducted an Environmental Impact Assessment to enable us to create a sustainability action plan.
We involved staff through training and several staff engagement activities, including a clothes swap, trialling a plastic free snack shop and an unwanted Christmas present swap.
We created a framework to deliver on sustainability objectives and action plan. This is made up of our Environmental and Sustainability Steering Group and our Sustainability Champions Group.

In our offices

Improved and highlighted our waste reduction and recycling facilities.
Encouraged reduced use of plastic, including limiting use of laminating.
Lift sharing where possible.
Use cleaning products developed to reduce waste and carbon emissions where possible (donated by one of our long-term corporate supporters and certified B Corp, Cleenol).
Lowering our energy use where possible, including our data reduction campaign, which included limiting our email usage, charity-wider data cleansing and deletion campaigns and sending fewer gifs.

In our grounds

In the spring/summer you might notice that we don’t cut the grass by our bridge. We choose to support wildlife on our grounds by letting it go wild.
Much of our fruit and vegetables are grown in our kitchen garden on site to reduce food miles.

In our shops

The fashion industry is the second-largest industrial polluter, accounting for 10 per cent of global pollution (source: Carbon Literacy Project). It’s an even bigger contributor to climate change than aviation and other transport industries.
By their very definition, our shops support sustainability by re-selling clothes and other household items, therefore reducing waste.
We now change how we move items for sale between our shops. Some items are ‘ragged’ if they can’t be sold, but we limit this as much as possible. Instead, we have a dedicated volunteer driver who moves the stock between our stores, trying to ensure a sale. We also sell ‘bundles’ of women’s clothes, which can then be resold individually on eBay and Vinted.

KH infographics_singles_space_v1.0_Trees

Our fundraising events

We consider sustainability across all our fundraising activities, making this part of our process when developing and refining each event or product.
We introduced more sustainable options for schools on our Schools Santa Run.
Supplied wooden, sustainable tree decorations sold at the Tractor Run.
Where possible, we use reusable banners.
We chose the Cycle London to Paris challenge, which is a mainly human-powered event eliminating the pollution associated with motorised transport and contributing to reduced air and noise pollution.
We’re now regularly running our Christmas Tree-cycle fundraising campaign to recycle Christmas Trees, which started in 2023.

A group of cyclists in helmets and bright jackets smiling on a road in northern France during the London to Paris cycle challenge for Katharine House Hospice.

What can you do to help us to continue to support the environment?

Please sign up to our Christmas Tree-cycle, ensuring your used Christmas tree is recycled.
Visit one of our retail outlets where you can donate and purchase pre-loved items.
- Why buy new when there could be something just right for you at lower cost that supports local palliative care?
- Shopping in our stores helps you reduce your carbon footprint by choosing pre-loved goods over fast fashion.
We are always in need of good quality items to sell, so please think of us the next time you are having a clear out.
Please choose a more sustainable option if taking part in one of our fundraising events.