Sustainability

Route Planning

Our vets and office team work hard to minimise miles driven by planning routes to calls efficiently and avoiding lengthy drives wherever possible. We value you understanding and flexibility when assigning appointment times and appreciate when horses come to the clinic for complex treatments as it avoids multiple members of staff driving to your yard and transporting equipment. We offer shared visits for clients on the same yard or within a 1 mile drive, so it is also in your benefit to coordinate routine treatment timings, such as for vaccines and dentals. 

Vehicles

You may have noticed that some of the team now drive electric vehicles for work. These company cars are part of our effort to ensure that the environmental impact of the essential miles we drive as part of the service we offer is reduced. 

Recycling

Clinical waste must be disposed of by incineration, which sadly by its nature is not very green. This is a huge area of discussion in the medical and veterinary industries, and something our vets have learnt about on recent training courses. To reduce the environmental impact of this, we carefully sort our rubbish so that incineration can be minimised, and recycle wherever possible. We recognise that recycling is not the perfect solution either, so have made efforts to reduce the rubbish we generate. 

Medication disposal

Medication disposed of in domestic waste bins or poured down the sink can pose a serious risk to the environment. We are always happy to dispose of excess or out of date medications for you and ask that you return any used needles or syringes (e.g. those used for nebuliser medications) to us for correct disposal. 

Please note there may be a cost associated with this over certain size/weight limits.

Printing

We are in the process of moving from paper invoicing (and newsletters) to email invoicing to reduce the paper used within the practice, and unnecessary emissions caused by posting when email could be used. We appreciate your support during this move, and ask that you ensure your email address registered with us is up to date. We do not print unnecessary paperwork within the practice, such as lab reports, and you will notice that unlike other practices we share our dental charts by email instead of as a carbon copy. 

Worming Care

Using unnecessary worming products can have a big impact on the environment, and contribute to wormer resistance. A percentage of the active ingredient in any wormer is excreted into the faeces and from there, into the environment where it can have a negative impact on birds and insects, reducing biodiversity and disrupting soil structure in the long term. 

Antibiotic Stewardship

As with wormers, using unnecessary antibiotics negatively impacts the environment, as well as being detrimental to treatment. Antimicrobials excreted into the environment can kill normal and healthy bacteria which are part of the environment and ecosystem. We only use antibiotics where necessary for treatment to avoid this. 

Ongoing Work

As a practice we discuss sustainability and how we could improve in monthly meetings. We are always open to conversations with clients and your suggestions!