Our Investors in the Environment Accreditation – what we’re doing today for a better tomorrow

Here at Woolton Vets, we are super proud of the service that we offer to both our clients and their pets. However, we also recognise that it is important to look after our environment too, and that’s why we’ve achieved 3 prestigious awards for the reductions we have made to our environmental impact. 

We’d love to share with you how we have done this, so read on to find out how we have achieved our highest level ‘green’ award status, and how we are continuing to have as little effect on our environment as possible. 

How our green efforts are recognised 

Veterinary practices can have a direct effect on the environment that we live in, from single use plastics to anaesthetic gases. Therefore, back in January 2022, we decided to take on the massive task of making our practice more eco-friendly. 

We decided to work with a company called Investors in the Environment (iiE), who help businesses to recognise their impact on the environment and how they can make changes to reduce their overall carbon footprint. 

There are three awards available, which start at bronze, progress to silver and then finish at achieving green status. Woolton Vets are delighted that our efforts have earned us our green status and we are proud of our ‘green team’ who work behind the scenes to help drive our greener initiatives.   

Now we have been recognised for our efforts, we undertake a yearly audit with iiE to look at our targets and identify new areas that we can work towards making more sustainable. 

What do we do to reduce our environmental impact? 

We decided to scrutinise our practice and tried to identify areas in which we could improve our physical impact on the environment. 

The green team started with a major refurbishment and replaced our existing windows with double glazing, helping to make our practice more heat efficient, minimising the need for longer periods of using a heating system. 

We then turned our attention to our lighting, switching to energy saving bulbs and only turning on the lights when we are using a specific room – every little effort helps!  

In order to monitor our energy usage, we started tracking our water, gas and electricity to ensure that our efforts were successful. Dual flush toilets were installed, allowing us to reduce our water consumption. 

Our other efforts in a bid to reduce our environmental impact include: 

• Effective waste segregation: We improved the segregation of our waste products. As we’re sure you can imagine, we produce our fair share of rubbish! 

By correctly segregating our waste, we saw our clinical waste amounts halve, with the majority of our waste now placed into general waste or being recycled. 

Clinical waste is often disposed of by incineration, so reducing the amount we produced was paramount to our award. 

• Reusable products: We decided to invest in reusable products, such as scrub hats and drapes. Our dental charts and surgical checklists are now reusable to reduce paper wastage, and the puppy pads that we use in dental procedures can be thoroughly disinfected and reused saving on single use pads. 

• Increase in recycling: Recycling is encouraged throughout the practice, including general recycling as well as the recycling of difficult materials, such as soft plastics and printer ink cartridges. 

Private client information has also been removed from our anaesthetic records, allowing us to recycle these more effectively, instead of shredding the details (shredded paper can’t be recycled) along with the use of forest-friendly paper. 

What other initiatives have we put in place? 

The iiE award is not just about the physical environment, but also the health and general wellbeing of our staff and the wider community. 

In a bid to support the local community, we have carried out litter picking efforts to help reduce the waste found on streets. 

We also supplied our staff members with pots and sunflower seeds to see who could grow the tallest sunflower. It’s safe to say that our team rose to the occasion, and all participated in the challenge to become more green-fingered. 

Charity is a big part of our values here at Woolton Vets, so we are organising for food to be donated to local animal charities this Christmas. We also carried out a charity walk for the local Marie Curie hospice, where we raised over £1000 for the amazing work that they do. 

What are our plans for the future? 

Even though we are super proud of our green accreditation, we are not stopping there – there are so many opportunities for us to continue our great work. 

We would love to reduce our paper usage even further by implementing reusable charts and paperwork throughout the practice, along with looking into more ways that we can reduce our general waste. 

With charity at the forefront of our minds, we are always on the lookout to raise money for local charities as well as organising donations to animal shelters. Community is important to us at Woolton Vets, so we are hoping to organise more litter picking activities in the future. 

We are exceptionally proud of the team at Woolton Vets, and we look forward to our future eco-friendly initiatives. A big thank you to our green team for making our vision a reality and also to the iiE team for supporting us through this amazing award. A special mention to Jess (featured in our photo with the award) who has been instrumental in helping the practice achieve and maintain our iiE accreditations over the years.