Improving Environmental Sustainability in Veterinary Practice.
Improving our environmental footprint is important to us at Macqueens. We have made changes to existing daily practices and implemented new ideas to make Macqueens a more sustainable and environmentally friendly practice.
Environmental Champions
What do they do?
Athena and Molly hold quarterly meetings where they discuss the team’s submissions from the suggestion box and implement new ways we can become a more sustainable practice. Recent improvements are the recycling of: Batteries and glass. They have also put into place a staff clothes and food swap.
Athena and Molly also make time to undertake CPD to keep up to date with new sustainability and climate change policies and complete an annual waste survey.
Recycling
We have recycling points throughout the practice. These included batteries, cardboard, glass, paper and plastics.
Minimizing anesthetic gas use
We use local blocks where appropriate and optimize anesthetic flow rate. We no longer use nitrous oxide and have exchanged isoflurane for sevoflurane which is better for the environment.
Wildflower Garden
We have a large garden with untouched wildflower meadow areas to encourage pollinating insects and wildlife. We scatter any fur clippings from our patients in areas outside for birds to use as nesting materials.
Preventative Healthcare
We offer a great value Healthy Pet Club which reduces the chance of your pets becoming unwell. A healthy pet makes less trips to the vet, meaning less car omissions reducing your carbon footprint.
Making sustainable choices
Our nurses uniforms and scrub hats are made from recycled bottles. 7 plastic bottles are used in one scrub top!
We also stock a number of items within the shop in reception.
We have Petface planet toys, biodegradable poo bags and other recycled items too!
We also have made other changes in our office, we use recycled paper and recycle paper envelopes.
We even have loo roll made from recycled paper in our toilets.
Disposing of unused medication
We dispose of any unwanted or unused medication safely, you may have seen our posters in reception.