At best, hospitals are rather soulless places. With stark design, neutral – or is that bland? – colour schemes, and limited furnishings further justified now to aid infection prevention, even a few brief days in hospital can be soul destroying for adults.

For children, this is ever more so and must surely contribute to, in some cases, a significant additional psychological burden adding to that caused by separation from Mum, Dad and friends, and the distress of all those horrible smells, sights and sounds, the medicines and other treatments.

Improved visiting arrangements for children’s wards may matters a little easier, and in the newer build hospitals designers and planners have recognised the need for a more friendly environment and do brighten up the environment. Regrettably, others seem to rely solely upon the same tired adhesive prints of Disney carton characters stuck to walls and doors. It may distract a 3 year old, at least for a few minutes, but older children derive no comfort from this.

And then, whatever the approach to environment design and furnishings, it becomes necessary to plonk one or more healthcare waste sack holders in that environment. Can there appearance be improved?

Wybone have a solution to this with their zoo animal bin stickers. Nice idea, assuming that the stickers are sufficiently robust to survive daily cleaning without deterioration and peeling at the corners.

The stickers look attractive, and would work equally well on any existing sack holders without the additional cost of buying an entire set of new bins. Its a clever idea, and do note that the main image colour reflects the sack designation of green, orange, yellow or black in order not to detract from the visual prompt for source segregation.

As always, there are positives and negatives. Why not extend the range to include slightly more pastoral or otherwise artistic scenes for bins on adult wards? Surely that would be an attractive option too.

But it is the inherent attractiveness of these stickers that gives cause for concern. Children in hospital are not tied to their beds, though some might think that they should be!

And we cannot overlook the possibility that the curiosity of children, exploring a new and different and strange and perhaps frightening environment might find the bin too attractive. How long until a toddler decides it will be fun to feed tiger, giraffe or one of the other characters? Don’t expect them to use the foot rail – little fingers will lift the lid, and reach inside. CQC inspectors and HSE will each be concerned at anything which attracts children to waste containers. For sharps bins, it is a given that these should be secure and out of the reach of children. But with sack holders, that’s not so easy as they cannot be mounted high on a wall or at the back of a bench.

I would love this idea, of brightening waste receptacles and the more general environment of hospitals and other healthcare facilities, and congratulate Wybone on their developments. But I fear an accident waiting to happen as children are drawn to these containers, which is of course entirely counterintuitive to their purpose.