Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick from the webinar Vet welcoming you to another episode of Vet Chat, the UK's number one veterinary podcast, and I'm really pleased to have Maa Pardo on the line today, who is a veterinary surgeon, originally graduated from Farragoza in er Spain. And is now working in Margate in Kent, er, as an ambulatory vet with Vet to you but we're also gonna be talking about a number of other topics as well. Might has a, a keen interest in sustainability, which is obviously a big interest of mine as well, so we're gonna be talking about that.

But first of all, Mita, great to have you on the, the podcast and thanks for taking time to, to speak to me. Yeah, thank you very much for inviting me. It's, it's a pleasure to be here.

Right so tell us a little bit about what, what made you become a vet and tell us maybe a little bit about the history since you've you've qualified as well. So I don't really remember why I decided to become a vet. I have asked my mom about it and she said that since I was very, very young, I just wanted to be a vet, but then my sister was the one that started in a vet before me, so she started university and 5 years before, and then I just followed her basically.

But yeah, I always, I had animals all my life. I, I grew up with dogs and then since I was 11 I had cats and I've been living with cats ever since. So it's more the small animals that I was passionate about.

And then after I finished my degree in Spain, I worked for a couple of years in Spain. I was doing emergencies mostly. I decided I wanted to do a little bit more further training and move to the UK to do a couple of internships first.

And a little bit of charity work and now I am back to you being in a quite a cool job being a mobile mobile vet. Yeah, that's my career I I was similar to you and I think a lot of vets have this same story of just wanting to be a vet from a very early age and I'm looking at now we've got the birds on the bird table and actually and the feeders and . It it was a sparrow that is my first memory that my friend accidentally killed on the playground and I thought, well, had I been a vet, I might have been able to save it and it just stayed as a sort of as a theme, as I think you said as well, you just always wanted to be a vet and.

Just very fortunate to be able to to do it as well, but maybe tell us a bit about how, how does the the job work with ETU that's ambulatory, so what sort of things are you, you doing in the in the job when you're travelling around to different people's houses and so on. So it's very interesting. So we're working in, in the hat area which is part of Kent.

It's the coastal part of Kent, and so we cover quite a few postcodes and I would say probably around 15 square miles that we cover with the bands. We have 3 bands and we do, we do bed consoles in one of the bands, so we do everything that you can think of in a normal small animal setting. And we have nurse consults as well.

So one of our nurses goes around as well doing we clinics and some sort of injectables that he can do. And then we have the operating band, which is the one that I use the most and which is a converted van into a theatre. So we, we plug the van into the mains of the client's house and then we can do all sorts of surgeries, radiographs, dentals.

I would say mostly everything apart from fancy fancy surgery because we don't have the, the training for it, but I'm doing my certificate in in surgery, so I do, I do quite a lot of soft tissue surgery in there and it works very well because the, the animal is. It's quieter it's calmer. They don't realise what is going on up until we are injecting them with something or they see the stethoscope, .

And you, you can build quite a good relationship with clients as well because there's less pressure on time, so we do less number of procedures or consoles. So you, you can build quite a very good knowledge about the client, about the animals, the lifestyles. So it works, it works very, very well.

I really like my job. So fantastic. So the, the van is all kind of plugged in to do surgery and things, so you, you've got the whole sort of set up within.

The van and I saw, I saw a picture I think on LinkedIn, it's like a transit van or of that sort of size. Yeah, so the theatre one is, is, I think it's a transit, yeah, it's quite a large one. Yeah.

Yeah, I had the pleasure to drive it and sometimes it's a bit scary. And, and so just in the Kent area in that Thane area that you're travelling around, how many clients do you, would you see in a, a standard week roughly? Oh, in a week.

I'm not sure in between the three of us. So we see around 12 to 14 consoles a day. I do 2 to 3 procedures a day, and the nurse will see at least 7 consoles as well.

So because it's 3 bands going every day, it's, it's quite a lot of people a week. Yeah, it's interesting, . I think ambulatory is becoming more and more popular, isn't it?

You do hear, you know, in other countries as well, I think in America, Australia that ambulatory is, it's definitely answering a need of people who perhaps don't want to take their animals to the vets, that it it makes life easier for them, doesn't it? Yeah, in Spain, where, where I grew up, there is now an a converted ambulance and the person that started the vet that started it is mostly doing the big and there's a rural area very close to the Pyrenees, and that is very difficult to have access to vets, so she's covering all that area. So yeah, it's just getting, you see more and more happening.

Fantastic. What kind of drew me to you, Mitta was, seeing, you know, obviously you're a vet, you know, we, we met on LinkedIn. But obviously also very involved with with Greenpeace.

So how did the sustainability interest develop? Was, was that something that came from, from being a vet? Was that a long-term interest or has that come later?

That came quite late if you in the grand scheme of things, I started my interest started in 2020 in January, and I was just doing a little bit of charity shopping in London and I found this book called How to Give a Plastic from Will McCallum. And, and I was reading that book with something switch in my brain and I was like, wow, we, I got everything wrong in my life like it was like obsessed of going shopping and buying new things and buying new clothes and and suddenly I started thinking about the impact that I was having in the environment. And funny enough, Willie McCallum is part of Greenpeace.

So one of the things I did was to start looking a little bit more into what Greenpeace was doing at that time and how to be part of it, to become and became part of the local group, which is, it's quite easy. You just found someone, some group locals that many of them in the country, and you start joining them for activities, so they do. A lot of like public information so they put the stools in the streets and they talk to people about environmental impact that we have mostly ocean plastics and forests.

They do quite out of little pickings as well which I'm quite passionate about and. And now, for example, what I do because we don't have a local Greenpeace in I'm a Greenpeace speaker and so people can contact Greenpeace and and request one of us to, to come and talk to them. So it can be from the schools, it can be from community groups and from universities, colleges, and my favourite one is care homes because I found elderly people they engage very, very nicely with what what I tell them.

So it's, it's quite a nice way of contributing because I think one of the main things that you can do in, in this battle and trying to be more sustainable and trying to create a better planet is talk about it and make more people aware of the problem and that's why I think being part of the Greenpeace speaker scheme has made me more able to have that shadow and spheres of, of interest and shadow that people will learn from me. And change and the more I talk about it, the more people ask me more questions like even at work, and it was, yeah, yesterday we were doing surgery and as we were doing surgery, one of the nurses said, oh by the way, what do you use instead of clingfilm in your kitchen because I'm trying to get rid of it because it's bad plastic, isn't it? And it's just random conversation and they know who to ask.

Yeah, yeah, you're passionate about it and I suppose . You know, it's interesting, you always had that light bulb moment. And starting to then change how you were doing things, and often that's the biggest impact isn't it, because talk is cheap, it's very easy to, you know, talk a good story, but actually changing the way that you do things, we've just had a new kitchen fitted, we've managed to recycle all the old components to to other people, you know, the, the oven, even the carcasses of the kitchen.

And then bought and it took some effort to go to somewhere where, you know, all of the kitchen is FSC, which is Forestry Stewardship Commission. You go into some shops selling kitchens and they don't know what FSC is, which is, you know, which is remarkable really, but the, the more you chat about it, the more you request things, I think companies are getting better, but it's perhaps just taking longer than. Is ideal.

What are the sort of maybe two or three things that you've done, yourself personally in your personal life that you've changed how you've done things, so, you know, presumably things like you're not using clingfilm now, but maybe a couple more of those. I think the main one that I was doing and I was unconscious about the impact of it was buying new clothes. I was, like I said, obsessed and with, I wasn't particularly fashion, I think.

I was just obsessed with buying new clothes. It was sort of my hobby, my, if I was getting very anxious, I was just going shopping and since, since 2020, I just don't buy any new clothes apart from gym clothes and maybe just scrop tops. And, and underwear, so things that you shouldn't buy secondhand basically, but all the rest of my clothes are secondhand and I mean it's cheaper as well, so it's great, but you know it's, it's good for the environment it's just thinking as well like do I really need this thing I'm just like, it's like a comfort buying what I'm doing.

So that was my biggest change I think. And my second biggest change was to avoid as much as I could flying and using a car. Which is very difficult because being a Spanish, I try to go to Spain to see my family relatively often.

But I have managed to do it successfully a few times now to go by train. So I take the Eurostar to Paris and then I take quite a long train from Paris to Ndaa, which is at the border with with Spain. And then someone will pick me up at the border, which is by car unfortunately, but to be fair, if I fly to Spain, they also need to pick me up from the airport so it's the same, the same distance in kilometres.

And when I'm in England, I try to try to travel by train as much as I can. And I commute to work for the past. 4 or 5 years now, and either by bicycle or walking.

So at the moment I cycle to work cause I, it's like 20 minutes cycle now and but I cycle every day regardless of the weather, which is, yeah, difficult sometimes. Yeah, especially when he's wet. Did you know the webinar that Virtual Veterinary Congress is back for 2024.

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Yeah, I find that, you know, the, the playing thing is, is difficult because also we're looking as a company to, you know, expand into America, so I'm gonna be at BMX but I really do try to. Think about it, you know, before we jump on a plane. The difficulty at the moment now, the, the, the state of English trains compared with Spanish or French trains is is quite problematic.

I've got to go down to London. I'm taking the Eurostar, to, to Belgium this week, so I try and use trains as much as possible as well, but actually the trains in. The UK are on strike from Liverpool to London, so this is part of a problem of where government needs to step in and actually run an efficient train system because when I go to France, Spain, .

Belgium, Holland, the trains are just so much more reliable than they are here so we can do so much and I, I don't like to. Kind of expect stuff from government because, you know, government can be slow in the way that they act. This particular government is not particularly green either.

So that is I think where presumably Greenpeace comes in and trying to encourage governments and big business to move quicker. So, obviously you're giving talks and things, is there, and we know Greenpeace has been activists who climb up big chimneys and and go out and stop er whaling happening, so really important direct action which I. On the whole, would support, I think we need a mixture of things, some of it is like our veterinary green discussion forum to bring people together to iron out differences and do that in a, in a more diplomatic and less binary way.

But Greenpeace has been so successful over the years, have you climbed any big chimneys lately, right? No, I don't do direct actions and because being a foreigner has the downside that you can get in a lot of trouble if you, if the police decided that you're doing something very illegal and I do non-direct ones. I'm the one that sends all the emails to the MPs all the time, which some people think they don't.

They don't work, but we have a success story from this year which was that we managed to get the 30 by 30, so it was our ocean protection campaign, and we were asking to have 30% of the oceans protected by 2030, and that has been now accepted and that was an online campaign. It was people sending emails to the government representatives. And funny enough that you talk about the current government and being greener, our, our campaigning, the one that we are focusing now.

The whole of us in Greenpeace are just working on this one. It's called Climate voter. So we are asking people to, to, to, to ask the politicians regardless of of from where are they coming from or which party.

To step up in the climate agenda and all of them to, to provide for the next election the best that they can in terms of climate agenda and to know that there will be a lot of people making them accountable for what there is going to be on offer. I'm not saying that we are going to all vote for a party is going to be that we are all going to vote. With the climate in mind more than anything else.

So yeah, we're asking 1 billion people to To be a climate voter and to tell the politicians that they will, they will vote only with, with someone that has the climate in their minds, and if they don't, they will vote someone else. Yeah, I think it's, I think it's really important and . The High Seas Treaty is just a really good example of that, the 30 by 30, which has been.

Talked about a lot by all the NGOs as well, obviously at the UN conference in Montreal in in December, and it's, it's so satisfying to see it coming into law, of course the next stage is to make sure it's policed and that it is actually upheld, which is sometimes a more challenging piece. We're obviously er having the, the cop conference in in Abu Dhabi at the moment or Dubai, I think it's Abu Dhabi. And, and the, the president, the president of the COP is the CEO of a very large petroleum company, so that will be one for us to watch, I think, to see how that how that develops.

My first reading of it was that they were planning to increase oil production, which, yeah, I'm not quite sure how that one works if you're president of a cop. Yeah, and the fact that all our representatives took private jets to go there as well. It was very, very disappointing.

It's just, yeah, there was a new, new report coming into, into the, in the news this morning. I was reading about it, that we, our goal was to get to 1.5 degrees maximum, and by the end of the century and we are already on 2.5.

So we are really, really running out of time and personally I have very, very, very little hopes with COP 28 this year. I'm just like a bit, yeah, not sure if it's going to happen. Yeah, I must have I was at COP 26, which was in Glasgow and I took the train and the bus to where I was going, and of course our Prime Minister at the time, who I think espoused green values but still, I think flew back down from the conference of a private jet.

It does, you know, the actions, I think it was Saint Francis of Assisi said preach all the time, use words occasionally. You know, the actions do really speak louder than words, don't they? Yeah, exactly, and yeah, I, I know it's difficult sometimes not to fly.

I'm the first one that I'm not perfect. I I will never be perfect and that's one thing that as well in, in my sustainability journey, I do advocate a lot for the sustainable issue which is if you haven't read the book from Jane Gal is definitely on my pile of books to read and because he's also a vet, and. Is, is that trying to be the best that you can and to do it by example.

If you try to be your best and people around you will see you and will be like, oh well, they're doing very well. And politicians and, and people, famous people should be the first ones being like, well, people see me and they took me as an example, maybe I should do better. Especially if our team is meant to be someone very environmentally friendly, maybe he will, he should have lived by by example.

I think it's . You know, it's interesting you were using the example there that, you know, you're not perfect, I certainly am not perfect as well. But I think sometimes also there's a, there's a fear of starting on the journey because it just looks so complex that, you know, why do we even bother starting.

So actually those single steps, you know, not using clingfilm, buying less clothes, you know, than, than, than you need and not going for fast fashion. They're all steps and similarly with the veterinary journey, you know, trying to use low flow anaesthetics, reducing the amount of plastic that we use. I know Zoe Halfare's talked about in the paper that 9% of medical plastic is recycled.

So actually the first thing is reduce the amount we're using. If you can reuse it, reuse it. So you know, I know in the NHS a lot of endotracheal tubes are used once and then thrown away, whereas we know that they can be saved and so on.

And then finally the last part, you know, if we are recycling, let's do better, but actually let's try and actually reduce the amount and I know . When we did this, Zoe was talking about the steel tins that you can autoclave instruments in. They're obviously more expensive to buy, you autoclave so there's a cost in energy, but .

You know, the, the frightening stats where there'll be more plastic in the ocean by 2050 than fish is . It's something we have to prevent, isn't it? Yeah, it is, and it's something unfortunate here in market we see, we see a lot of .

When it's, when is the high season, so during the summer, I we do little peaks all year around here and during the summer you see the litter that people have dropping the beach at the moment when it's happening. But then during the winter we do see quite a lot of things that they come with the tides and it's very sad because you know that has come from the ocean and it's just it's that sort of wow, where is this travelling from? There's so many like fish nets as well that we get here.

Yeah, I similarly live at the beach as well, but in, the other side, on the west side is just north of Liverpool city centre. And similarly, you know, going down and and seeing the beach, often just thoughtlessness, you know, a Coke can gets thrown on the floor or a bottle of beer or whatever. And you know that plastic will take centuries to to decompose, won't it?

So I I always try and go down with, with a bag and pick up or put some stuff into the bin and you know, even one or two things, it makes a difference, doesn't it? I think this is the way we, it makes us feel better but it hopefully it makes other people more hopeful if just those little actions, if everybody does them, they add up to a big action, don't they? I do and I have the feeling of communities every time I go, I go with a group and that I, I volunteer for and I sometimes go on my own and I just want every time I go, someone will say thank you every time people are, people acknowledge that you're doing something for everyone.

And it's a sense of community as well when you see other people doing it on the other corner like wow, I'm not alone. It's yeah, the, the sense of community, I think is, is very important. And, and, you know, again, it starts conversations because you're doing an action so people can see that you're doing something very practical and then off the back of that, it's, oh isn't it terrible that this is happening, yes, especially plastic because it lasts so long.

And people change as well, don't they? Maybe that next time they bring a plastic, a bag to, to pick up things, maybe not a plastic bag, often it is to sort of take, yeah, yeah, it's . It's a starter.

Yeah, and I obviously you've done such great work with Greenpeace, you know, with the, the, the beach cleans, we do some of them at Webinar vets when we come down and do some beach cleaning as well. But I, I know also you're very involved with, with Vet Sustain, which obviously we enjoy working with as well with the sustainability summit and the Greens discussion forum. How long have you been involved with Vet Sustain and what, what are you doing with them?

So I think I started a couple of years ago, no 3 years ago actually, when I moved to Mars when when I started getting more involved, and for the last, I think it's been a year and a half and I coordinate the champions group and so the champions group is a small group, we are like 20 to 30 people and so we are. From every little background, I would say we have people that are in university, people that are large animals, small animals, wildlife, and that they are very, very passionate about sustainability in veteran medicine. So we, we have every 6 months a meeting in which we will discuss things that we, we have been doing, try to get a little bit of accountability of things that we are trying to implement in our own practises, and but those are like bring topics that they are of interest.

So in that, in the last one we talked about and how to be more. Knowledgeable in sustainability. So different type of courses that you can do to learn more like for example, being a carbon literate and which is happening now with the sustain as well, which is quite a good course if, if I can say and but also like being more involved with the carbon calculator or doing the masters for the environment, those, those sort of things that you could, you could do as, as an educational purpose.

And the next one is going to be on parasiticized because we all know that we are overusing them and with the new RCDS and legislation, we also need to be more careful in prescribing them. So it's just, it's just bringing people together and again having that type of community in which we can all talk freely, especially of the difficulties of trying to be more sustainable in clinical practise. And, and try to like help each other out, mostly.

I think that peer group dynamic is really important, you know, we see it the Green discussion forum that. People go away enthused because they can see they're not the only person that's interested in this, but actually there's another 40, 50 people working in different companies. And and then of course the conversations go on post event where relationships develop and people can talk about the good things that they're doing and ask for help as well.

So it's, it's really powerful and you know, Vett Sustain has done. So much and of course Laura was joint winner of our first Laura H of the Veterinary Green Awards which are going to be announced again we're gonna announce those in, I think it's early February at the veterinary at the virtual congress 2024, so we're hoping to get lots of entries. So if you are listening and you're doing some cool sustainability stuff, then please do look out for those awards as well.

My. It's been great speaking to you. I always love speaking to passionate people about the environment.

We, we can all have our ups and downs about this, . On the whole, I'm a man of hope, but then as you say, if you go down to the beach and see a load of rubbish, it does make me quite sad. So it's always good to have positive people like yourself around to to keep the spirits up.

So thank you for everything that you're doing and, and, you know, for taking time to have a conversation with me today. Thank you very much for having me. And yeah, if anyone wants to reach me, I am sustainable that in Instagram and I'm always open for any chat or advice.

That's great, yeah, we'll definitely put the the website and the email in the in the notes below the podcast or the podcast so that people can get in contact, but thank you for all that you're doing, really appreciate it, Mitta. Thank you. Thanks everyone for listening.

You know how passionate we are at the webinar vet about sustainability. Do start on the journey, but if you need any advice, Mita is a great person to go and speak to. So thanks for listening.

This has been Vet Chat, the UK's number one veterinary podcast. Hope to see you on a podcast or a webinar very soon. Take care.