The Client

From its outset – in 2005 – Avery Healthcare has focused on providing the highest possible standards of living for those in its residential, dementia and nursing care homes, as well as offering peace of mind to residents’ family and friends. Headquartered in Northampton, employing nearly 3,000 people and, since 2022, jointly owned by Reuben Brothers and Welltower Inc, Avery is, currently, the UK’s fifth largest care provider.

Avery’s reputation for delivering high-quality homes has resulted in it gaining a strong foothold in the private care market. Now in the process of increasing its stock of 100 care homes around the country, Avery is active in both the UK’s care and independent living retirement sectors.

Prioritising enabling residents to live as fulfilled and normal a life as possible, Avery also focuses on providing for residents’ well-being, catering for their physical, psychological, social and nutritional needs.

The Challenge

When it came to waste management, Avery’s practice was to hire skips. While this may be standard practice within the care sector, it raises some practical issues – such as, skips mustn’t contain fridges, mattresses or upholstered items. Items such as cushions, chairs and sofas can’t be placed in a mixed skip without incurring a significant supplement rate. This causes major waste management issues for all care sector businesses – and results in them incurring ‘extra’ costs. Indeed, typically, this increases the cost of the skip by some 26%.

Avery wanted to standardise its waste management practices and save money on waste removal – particularly when it realised there were significant differences in the skip hire charges its homes were incurring throughout the country. In particular, charges for supplementary waste items, such as mattresses varied widely – by up to £70 + VAT per item.

So, Avery set about looking for more cost-effective waste management services with nationally standardised prices – and found Waste King, the environmentally-friendly waste collection and recycling services specialist. Waste King has a set price nationally and, rather than having multiple suppliers take different waste materials, such as fridges, mattresses, or upholstery items, Waste King can remove all waste items. Moreover, Waste King’s charge, nationally, for supplementary waste items – including furniture, fridges and mattresses – is only £10 + VAT per item.

However, Avery still needed to resolve the issue of where and how to store its waste items until collection. Skips are unsightly and unwelcome – particularly if, like Avery, residents’ physical and psychological well-being is paramount. This led Avery to explore using Waste King’s Recycling Pods at its homes. These pods can often be installed, unobtrusively, out of sight. Avery realised the aesthetic ‘value add’ this could be for both residents and their families who came to visit them.

The Solution

Having initially used Waste King to service a number of Avery’s care homes, Avery realised this produced both cost and aesthetic benefits. So, it asked Waste King to install Recycling Pods in all Avery’s locations – and this was completed nationwide within four weeks.

This allowed ‘bulky’ waste, such as furniture and mattresses, to be stored in the Recycling Pod rather than take up vacant rooms – allowing these rooms to be made available to new residents.

Furthermore, switching from using skips to Waste King for its waste management has reduced Avery’s carbon footprint. Skip lorries tend to generate 55% more carbon emissions than the bulk waste trucks provided by Waste King. Waste King also has electric trucks in its fleet – and this reduces carbon emissions still further.

The Result

All waste at Avery-run care homes is now stored securely and hygienically in Recycling Pods, leaving the care homes tidy and efficient. This is also producing significant savings for Avery in terms of cost, efficiency, aesthetics and carbon emissions.

Moreover, Waste King reports weekly, monthly and annually on all its waste movement activity for Avery. This enables Avery to forecast its waste costs accurately and provides a complete traceability record for every waste item. This reporting highlights any high-usage care homes – and Avery can then bring these homes’ performance back into line with standard benchmarks.

In addition, as an environment-compliant company, Waste King can demonstrate that its recycling levels and recovery percentages continue to increase.