Hello everyone, Antony Chadwick, another one of our podcasts, our weekly podcasts, which we're still concentrating on, on sustainability and regeneration. Obviously, COP 26 is coming up in November, and we want to really keep you informed with all the fantastic stuff that's going on in the veterinary profession. It's really, the series I've, I've tried to set it up as a celebration of hope.

We can all do, probably not huge things, we can do small things, but if we're all doing little things, they, they all add up. We're very fortunate today to have Laura Sullivan, who's coming on to speak today. I've been aware of her through all the social media posts that she does and all the great work that she's doing with all scrubbed up.

And I've managed to track her down and I'm so pleased to have her on. The podcast today. Thank you so much.

Thank you for the introduction. Oh no, well, it's great to have you on and, and obviously we were talking before, rather unkindly, now I suppose I can't call you a, a young vet anymore because it's obviously it was 2009, it's been a little while, hasn't it? It has, yeah, like, I've been a vet now for 12 years and even saying that out loud is a bit, shocking, yeah.

Not, no longer in the young vet category. But it was great to hear, you know, obviously doing the locums around the Bristol area and how moving around, obviously. Actually it's really helpful because you see all the good practise and the not so good practise maybe that goes on in some practises.

So it really helps you to, you know, be the best you can be almost doesn't it, as there are pros and cons of being locums, but there's a the definite pro is that you're just learning from so many people as well, aren't you? Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, I've, I've been locuming over the last 3.5 years sort of in and around the Bristol area.

I absolutely love it. It gives me the, you know, work-life balance that I enjoy, it gives me the flexibility to sort of focus on other projects, like, all scrubbed up, and, other projects that I'm involved in. And, yeah, I just really enjoy it.

I meet so many new people, new colleagues, work in different teams, and it gives me a chance to sort of see how different practises work, how, how they run, how they manage things, how efficient they are on a sustainability, . From a sustainability point of view. So yeah, I, I really enjoy it.

I've done a variety of roles over the last few years, you know, in general practise as a junior vet, a senior vet, clinical director, and I've done some work volunteering abroad, in Sri Lanka, which was awesome. So, yeah, it's a nice, it's been a nice mix. It is a great job, isn't it, and it's a, it's a shame that you know, during the pandemic, and obviously we know all the the potential issues that, you know, it can be, it can be draining, but actually it is still, I think, obviously I'm not practising anymore, but did do for 25 years, it's, it's still one of the best jobs in the world, isn't it?

Yeah, absolutely. We're very lucky. So, tell me, Laura, what was the big idea, and I know you do a lot, lot, lots of things, as I say, you're quite plural, but the, you know, they all scrubbed up, is, is a greater business.

So tell me a little bit about how that all came about and how you started working on that. Yeah, absolutely. So, I guess it was kind of driven by a passion to help.

Veterinary and healthcare professionals become a bit more sustainable in practise. I've always kind of been, passionate about the environment and, you know, doing what we can to look after it. And, you know, obviously, initially taking steps in my personal life to sort of, you know, make eco-friendly switches and and do what we can at home.

You then kind of go to work and you sort of see all this. This wastage or disposable products or. Just You know, areas that we can certainly do better in and it kind of inspired me to start my own small business, creating reusable scrap hats, .

And it's gone really well. So yeah, it's called all scrubbed up, do a huge range of sort of designs to suit everyone. It's a really nice way to sort of showcase the Individual and the person behind your uniform, you know, we are all different, we've all got different interests and actually it it helps sort of showcasing someone's personality while while at work doing a job.

Brilliant, and you know, do you make these all yourself? Are you an expert sewer, or where do you, where do you get them all from? So I make the majority of the orders myself.

Over the last year, I've had to outsource some sewing, to a colleague, just to sort of keep on top of the business, and do some of the sewing, but. Yeah, I, I kind of run the business myself. I try and be as obviously sustainable as possible in the production of the squad hats.

So the Fabrics I use, the majority of my fabrics come from, one particular wholesaler, that I use because they, they print their fabrics on a, on a print on demand basis. So that reduces wastage. And they, they also use a pigment printing process instead of reactive dyes.

So what that means is that it uses less energy, water, and materials, for the yard or metre of the fabric to be produced. So an average, sort of conventional fabric would, would utilise 200 litres of water per 5 yards of fabric, whereas this company uses less than a thimbleful. So it is, it's quite a drastic difference.

So I kind of, you know, try to com encompass. Sustainable sustainability into the, the manufacture of them, you know, I also do, you know, I'm using Ecosia as my. Search engine which helps plant trees.

I've got, you know, a renewable energy provider that supplies the house with energy. For the sewing machine. The sewing machine, yeah to that.

I have actually got one of those old singer hands which gives me the workout back up. It brings back very happy memories because my mum was a seamstress. So I remember her sewing quite a lot and she actually did my.

Sister's wedding dress, which obviously was a, a big thing to do. So, yeah, I remember the old singer, where she was working with the, the hand, sorry, the foot, pedal and things. No, that's, that's really excellent.

Now tell me, Laura, are you able to multitask though? Can you, sew and listen to one of our webinars as well? Is that something that you've been able to do in the past?

It has been done, yes. Now I'm not one of these talented people that can multitask, but I have to tell a little story about when I was, giving some lectures in Iceland. I'd been invited over there, a number of years ago now for dermatology.

And as I started to lecture, the room which was predominantly female, reached into their bags and got their sewing their knitting out and knitted throughout, the lecture, which I thought was quite cool that they could do two things at once. So, I am in awe of you. But I think the water consumption, you know, that's a huge part of obviously sustainability as well.

I, at the moment, I had about 2 or 3 pairs of jeans that had big holes in them, and I know that's kind of now the fashionable thing, but this was just because they worn out a bit, so I then threw them out. And I've taken several months and I still haven't bought any because of course, As you said, you know, making a pair of jeans can be incredibly costly from a water perspective, and water is such a sca well, such an important commodity, isn't it, for life. So that, that's fantastic.

If you're bringing your water consumption down, you know, almost 100%, that's amazing, isn't it? Yeah, do, do, do, do what we can. And, and I think the other point, again that Zoe.

How Ary brought up in the webinar that we did at the virtual congress was, it's also just helpful for identification and communications, isn't it? Because I know you've said about the personality thing which I, you know, absolutely agree with. I recently had a a suit made and my wife came with me and the lining for the suit, we went past one that was green with turtles on.

And I said I want that one, and the man tried to dissuade me, my wife tried to dissuade me, but I still have a, a suit with with turtles on the inside, so we all have the individuality side probably as vets, but I think also from a coms perspective it's really useful, you know, when you are masked up. You've got all your PPE on, you've got your hat on, you know, I suppose it's easy to, to, you know, mistake who people are, and that can be confusing in an operating theatre, can't it? Yeah, absolutely, yeah, so it can just help identify who's who as well.

Yeah, I think obviously it's, it, it is important that we do use reusable items like scrub hats and obviously gowns and drapes, because again with some of my research, I found that only 5% of medical plastic is actually recycled, and in fact if the medical industry was classed as a country, it would be the 5th largest country for, you know, its carbon emissions and things, so it's a huge. Area and this obviously makes a big difference, but what other areas, I mean, when would you advise people using reusable gowns or, or, you know, disposable gowns, have you got any thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, I think, obviously on a sort of case by case, basis, I know Zoe did a brilliant article.

A little while back in Companion magazine, yeah, reusable hats have been shown to be superior to single-use disposables in terms of bacterial contamination. So they, they should be suitable for the majority of cases. You know, I, I know a lot of referral centres use them.

I know, orthopaedic surgeons use them, you know, as long as you're laundering them sort of regularly. So there was a study, a really interesting study by Bazola, last year that compared the environmental effects of reusable versus disposable, surgical wear like gowns and hats and things. And they looked at that from right from material sourcing all the way to the end of life disposal.

And that included sort of laundry and water treatments and stuff. And they found that Yeah, huge amount of reduced natural resource energy consumption. Greenhouse gas emissions were reduced by like 66%.

Water consumption was reduced, and, as well as sort of, you know, less, less wastage as well. So it really made like a significant difference by, Switching to reusables. Brilliant.

I know you've talked a little bit about some tips like the Ecosia . Alternative to Google for, for search and things which is really good because of course they plant trees, don't they, and, for each search. So, so that's great.

Have you got any more sort of tips for people listening in? Cos I think it, the problem with this whole sort of area is that people can end up getting a bit desperate and, and not see that actually we can sort this out. And and some of it is about obviously thinking globally, but actually as individuals we can only do a relatively small thing, but if we all do that, it actually builds up, doesn't it?

So have you got some tips, obviously for, you know, for myself, but also. You know, for other people listening, personally, but also, you know, potentially about practise, things that you've come upon. So yeah, I've got two, or a couple of tips, that, I can think of.

So the first one on a, on a personal basis, that can actually have a really big impact, and it's not one you'd automatically sort of jump to think about, you know, when thinking about sustainability, but can have a really huge impact. And that one is looking at, looking at where your pension is. There's reports sort of showing that.

In the UK, 2.7 trillion. Pounds is invested in pensions.

And that's a huge amount of money and a lot of pension providers are actually investing in fossil fuels. So there's a really useful website called Make My Money Matter, and you can actually search your pension provider and it will tell you how green they are. They, they, they report on their website that Making your pension green is 21 times more powerful than reducing flying than going vegetarian or changing your energy provider.

So that seems like a really Sort of easy, easy thing to sort of take a look at, and change, and the website will kind of guide you through and give you suitable alternatives. It will also generate an email or a tweet if you want to contact the pension providers to see if, you know, you can encourage them or, you know, to, to sort of start investing in greener or more renewable, initiatives. So that's something sort of on a personal front I've, I've been sort of looking into over the last couple of weeks.

The, the other ones were just touching back on. The, sometimes we can feel quite overwhelmed by how many things there are to change and where to start and what to do, and particularly sort of looking at, looking at things at work, looking at your carbon footprint, is, is maybe considering looking at something like investors in the environment, accreditation. I know you guys have done that at the webinar but, and it, I think it's, it, it's, it just provides that really useful sort of structured framework.

To, you know, look at it in a sort of staged step by step approach, to sort of create. An environmental policy for your practise to create smart goals and targets and sort of really look at what we're doing in practise and what improvements you can make. We found that really useful and we had Chantelle on er Bran Brandwood a couple of weeks ago, talking about, you know, offsetting as well, so calculating your carbon, which we're we're trying to get the green level, which is the highest level.

And you know, if you don't measure it. You can't make a difference, so it's actually the measurement and then say, well, how can we take it down 5 or 10% and as you say, with some of these strategies, you know, as simple as as using renewable, hats and things, you know, hats that you can reuse over and over again. And obviously gowns and drapes, they all make a, you know, a huge difference, don't they?

Yeah, yeah. I think it's about looking at your, like, waste streams and how your Segregating your waste, that can be, a really key one as well. Making sure, you know, you can switch, from, like, single use low bins, and you can switch them to things like bio bins or cardboard bins that are approved for sort of clinical use.

Not only will that reduce the, The use of sort of plastic in in the making of the bin and the disposal of the bin, but it will therefore reduce the weight of your wastage and that will therefore reduce the cost of your wastage. So I know, for example, Davies, pets, specialists have they've reported sort of, you know, huge savings every year from, you know, switching. To the cardboard bins.

That's really excellent. I think it's been so interesting speaking to you. I think the, you know, this isn't like a huge, huge, massive initiative, the same as, you know, what we're doing with our sustainability, but it's everybody making a difference, isn't it?

If every practise did something, that will actually have a a massive effect and obviously as, The medical industry in total, you know, emits so much carbon, we as vets are obviously partly responsible for that as well and we need to do something about it, so thank you so much for the hard work you're doing with all scrubbed up. And I was hoping to see you at Alan Robinson's vet dynamics conference, but unfortunately I've got to have a little operation, so I'm gonna miss it, and I think you're, you're doing that very sneaky thing of going in virtually aren't you, so you, you won't be there as a physical being, will you? Not this time, unfortunately.

But I will be at the London vet show at the end of the year. . That's we, we will definitely, look forward to seeing you at that and, and perhaps we can get you over to our pizza and Prosecco to enjoy a glass of Prosecco with us.

If there's Prosecco on there, that's fine. I, I'm gonna be a bit cheeky now, obviously, people will be listening in from the webinar there and obviously, you know, we'll be keen to see some of these snazzy hats which we can perhaps, you know, put the, the, the web address on so people can go and have a look at them. Is there any way we can have a little cheeky discount for, for people listening to the podcast or from the webinar vets?

For you, Anthony, yes, of course. Yeah, so if, if people head to www www.allscrubbed up.com.

And enter the discount code TWV for the webinar, so TWV 5. For a 5% discount. Laura, thank you so much and er looking forward to seeing you very soon.

Bye bye. Thanks, Anthony, bye.