Artwork created from thousands of plastic Covid-19 vaccine lids saved from landfill by Hywel Dda University Health Board staff and volunteers has won the Culture and Language Wales Award at this year’s Welsh Sustainability Awards.

During the height of the Covid-19 vaccination programme, Gemma Brown, then mass vaccination centre lead at Hywel Dda, inspired staff and volunteers to collect the vaccine vial lids.

The vision was to create a bespoke piece of art to honour the efforts of staff and volunteers, which was then created in 2023 by Nathan Wyburn named ‘A Dose of Art’.

Sharon Daniel, Interim Executive Director for Nursing, Quality and Patient Experience at Hywel Dda, said: “This win covers a lot of areas that are very important to us as a health board, sustainability, integrating art into our healthcare settings, and of course honouring all our staff and volunteers for their dedication throughout the pandemic.

“The vaccine programme was incredibly necessary, but an unintended outcome was an increase in waste destined for landfill.

“It was inspired of Gemma to see an opportunity to repurpose the plastic lids to not only create a piece of artwork but to also prevent thousands of bits of plastic from simply being thrown away.”