It's a Bug's Life - Environmental Sustainability Strategy launched with Bug Hotel competition

Residents and staff have been creating new accommodation to welcome a different group of new residents at our homes.

As part of the launch of our Environmental Sustainability Strategy, we held an internal competition for homes to create and construct bug hotels from recycled materials. The new hotels have been placed in positions in gardens at the homes. Most homes opted for sturdy constructions using old pallets and drilled holes in sawn-through branches and small pieces of wood. Other materials like twigs, leaves, shells, pine cones and stones were then placed to create hiding places and cosy nooks for bugs, beetles, butterflies, insects and bees.

Residents also enjoyed painting and decorating the hotels with flowers, ladybirds and other insects as part of their regular craft sessions. Most chose to name their bug hotel, with excellent puns such as ‘Bee-n-Bee’, ‘Holiday Inn-sect’, ‘The Ugly Bug Hotel’ and the ‘Bug-tory Hotel’.

Judges reviewed the entries based on appearance, construction, resident involvement to come up with a winner, which was ultimately chosen as Valentine House in Silver End, between Braintree and Witham in Essex, where the home supports people living with dementia. Their splendidly-named ‘Bug-ingham Palace’ features a solid construction, with plenty of living and hiding accommodation for different types of bugs. It has been decorated with painted flowers, ladybirds and other insects, made by the residents at the home.

The competition was held as part of our new Environmental Sustainability Strategy, supporting CQC’s assessment framework in the Well-Led aspect of home registration. Within the assessment, there is an obligation for homes to understand the negative impact of activities on the environment and that staff and leaders in homes recognise the impact and take active steps to focus on embedding low-carbon care and resource efficiency.

As a leading care provider, we already support many areas, including:

• Installing LED lighting and motion sensors, which use 90% less energy and lasts 25 times longer
• Using water flow restrictors to allow appliances and filtration systems to operate at maximum efficiency
• Installing Electric Vehicle charging points, promoting sustainable transport alternatives
• Conducting solar panel assessments and installations: significantly reduce electricity bills, providing long-term energy savings, making us less vulnerable to power outages and fluctuating energy prices
• Using electronic care planning, paperless processes and systems.
• Monitoring medication wastage and development: using dry powder inhalers cuts down on greenhouse gas emissions from traditional format inhalers
• Recycling and waste management – using the correct bins for General Waste, Dry Mixed Recycling, Food Waste and Glass
• Auditing of supply chains to ensure their green priorities align with ours