How Pennine Vets is Going Green

We all have to do our bit to be friendly to the planet and here at Pennine Vets we take this very seriously. There are limitations to what we can do, we must maintain sterility and focus on our primary aim of looking after our patients but we have taken a number of steps to be as green as we can. We are also constantly looking at new ideas.

• Low Energy Lightbulbs - Our Harwood surgery is now using 100% energy efficient light bulbs which has enabled us to reduce our electricity consumption by half compared to the Tottington surgery. The Tottington surgery has approx 2/3 lit by low energy light bulbs and as new bulbs become available, we hope to convert all the lighting to energy efficient by the end of 2008. We also make use of natural light where possible and we hope both surgeries have a bright, natural look to them.
• Energy Efficiency - Any new electrical items bought, if graded have to be in the A band for electrical efficiency. This includes all our fridges and washing machines. Our computers are chosen to have low consumption chips inside and all non-essential equipment including the computers are turned off overnight.
• Heating & Cooling - In our Harwood surgery we have fitted a modern, energy efficient condensing gas boiler to provide hot water on demand and our heating. Both our surgeries also have energy efficient air conditioning for use during the hot summers. We are careful not to set this too cool but we do need to control the environment to best look after our patients.
• Recycling - We reuse most of our cardboard boxes with another local business, reducing cardboard waste and recycle most of the rest of the paper and cardboard. We also recycle our empty cans, bottles and jars from our kitchen waste.
• Packaging - Some packing is essential in a vets, we need to maintain sterility for our surgical kits, syringes and needles. However, we make a conscious decision to choose products that have minimal plastic content, using the more environmentally riendly paper packaging where possible.
• Paper (the move to paperless) - We have changed the design of our kennel forms and anaesthetic consent forms to reduce by half the amount of paper used during operations. We are also using double sided printing at both surgeries where possible. More and more we are using email rather than the postal system and our computer suppliers are working with the insurance industry to use electronic sending of insurance claims. We already do 95% of our supply ordering on-line and all our consent forms are scanned for archiving, reducing the space devoted to storage of paper to the minimum. A paperless surgery is not yet possible but we have reduced our consumption by 1/3 in the last 12 months.

As new technology and techniques become available, we will continue to reduce our impact on the environment to the minimum and this will be a never ending process.