Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick with yet another one of our vet chat podcasts where we're we're really concentrating on sustainability and regeneration. How do we look after our planet better, particularly with COP26 coming in the not too distant future in Glasgow. And we're very fortunate today to have a very A good friend of mine, Gemma Davidson, who is a sort of plastic scouser, she's from the Wirral, but she's almost a scouser.

She, she went to Liverpool University, qualified there in, in 2010, and then went off to work in practise for a while before, where I got to know her, working for lovely company Protection. Gemma's recently moved to Mackle, which the makers of Oral Aid, and I know we're gonna be talking a little bit about that during the webinar. But really, you know, I know having spoken to you on a number of occasions on this, Gemma, you know, how concerned you are about the environment as well, and how committed you are to making changes both in your personal life.

But also business life as well. So maybe we will start off by, I know you've been very excited, moving to your new position, and I'm gonna make up your, your, your sort of, it's a very much a growing company, Mackel. Obviously has oral aid, which we'll talk about a little bit, but .

You've come in as a sort of chief veterinary officer marketing officer to really try and push the brand forward and get it more recognised to the vets, but very much with a sustainability hat on as well, so maybe tell us a little bit about that, what made you go for this particular position. Yeah, absolutely, well, you know, as you said, protection is a lovely company and it's been my home for a long time, so I had to take something, you know, kind of special to to make me go anywhere else and. Mackle Animal Health based in Northern Ireland, family led company, been around since 2006, and they have this wonderful oral rehydration product oral aid, and they've been considerably expanding very, very rapidly and, you know, rightly so, it is a great product, in the last few years and they're a position to bring myself on, as you say, to really lead the veterinary.

Division in the UK and globally and we've also took on a marketing manager and and global brand manager at the same time, so you know, lots of investment. Going into the company. And yeah, the product is absolutely fantastic.

It's It's a ready-made oral rehydration, which is just great for, you know, animals that need any increased fluid intake, highly palatable. But obviously anyone who's familiar with it will also be aware that it comes in plastic bottles as well. So, you know, the product is a ready-made product in plastic bottles.

Myself, my massive, massive eco warriors. We've already established and we'll establish more in this, and People might say, oh, you're going to a company that uses lots of plastic bottles for this product, you sort of really into sustainability. Well, how does that gel?

Well, actually, the company's ethos is very much aligned with my own, and they are aware that, you know, plastic, in every single product going out isn't necessarily ideal. There's no other way around at the moment because of the type of product, the way it is, the legislation that sort of, drives that forward. I think it's GMP legislation, which means it.

Yeah, good manufacturing practise and the regulatory to make sure, you know, the product is what we call a hot fill product as well. So it takes a particular type of container to hold that safely. And in in with that comes obviously all the microbial tests and everything, you know, it has to be safe and, and, you know, for the product.

However, a lot of that legislation probably, you know, restricts the amount of what we call recycled material you can use. So it's not recyclable, you can use material that is ultimately even 100% recyclable, but the amount of recycled material in those containers that that's sort of restricted. I think the way technology for plastic bottles, etc.

Is going, that is going to catch up with us in the next year or two. So hopefully we can move more to saying right, if we use or need to use plastic, then it doesn't necessarily be need to be all virgin plastic. There can be more of a percentage of recycled, etc.

I think you'll find that a lot of the big drinks companies, a lot of the big companies that use a lot of plastic bottles or containers are having the same issue at the moment, and are looking at ways to mitigate that. And as a company, we are, you know, they, they're greatly dedicated to, right. OK, so we can't get around this at the moment.

So how do we look to, you know, reduce our carbon footprints and we're very much looking at carbon offsetting. So, We're looking at ways that we can actually put back, plant trees, you know, and, and actually reduce our carbon footprint overall. And then additionally, exciting news coming up soon, we we've come up with.

I will, I will let the cat out of the bag even though that's cruel in a veterinary world to put a cat in a bag in the first place, let's not let it out. You know what, Antony, we are as people that are indigenous to the Liverpool Northwest region. I think we are oversharers so.

I'm glad you do like rein me in at times. We you know everything about us, don't you, before you, you know, you've even wanted to know, so no, you're right, but exciting news coming in terms of our moves towards making this product and this company more sustainable, will be hopefully announced at London Vett show, . So if you can pop along and see us at London Betro or come and chat to us afterwards, we'll hopefully have some some more exciting news and how we're really moving to push forward as much sustainability, you know, as we can and, and Anthony, who's the, you know, the CEO of Mackle is really sort of dedicated to this as a company as well, which is, which is why we're aligning and why I'm there like things.

That's brilliant and obviously we're doing very similar you know, with investing in the environment, calculating our carbon so we can offset, but also doing some of those cool things, you know, of, planting trees and actually we had . somebody speaking about wildflower meadows in one of our recent podcasts, and obviously we've had a little wildflower meadow in in work and a little one at home, which is, which is really nice. So it sounds like really exciting stuff happening at Mackle with with oral aid, we will wait with bated breath.

Does, can I ask, does, does my garden count as a wildlife meadow, because I've, I've sort of abstained from weeding for the last two months, so, my effort. It, it will definitely be a bit more biodiverse than if you were putting loads of chemicals on it and cutting it to a. That's what I'm telling the neighbours, that's what I'm telling the neighbours why I'm not doing any gardening at the moment, so.

Well, I have a reputation on our road for having. A slightly scruffy garden, to my wife chagrin, but actually, you know, yesterday I was sitting out there with two hedgehogs about 3 ft away from me, munching away at food and things, so it's . There's methods to our madness, aren't they.

I think that it was, it's very Victorian to have a very perfect garden. You know, using pesticides, and once you start using pesticides and herbicides, of course, you know, just basically have environmental collapse, can't you? So we, at least in my garden, that's, not gonna happen.

That's true. My husband's been actually, you know, it's so Much apple cider vinegar and all sorts and bicarbonate of soda floating around at the moment because he's been googling tonnes of research for be safe sort of weed killers that have no chemicals in. I've got to admit most of his concoctions have failed, although I do wonder how much he's.

Not to be remotely sort of, you know, down on my husband at all, but he, he does kind of wing it. He doesn't like to be hampered by measurements. So I think maybe he's going off on his own tangents, and that could be why his experiments are failing so far.

But weeds are good, weeds are good, we like weeds, and you'll have to come over and have a look at our, our flower meadow and and hopefully these things improve each year as they start to develop. So Greece what what obviously Merkel is doing, but I, I know. You know, you, you do a lot personally as well, and I thought it would be great to chat about that and particularly within the podcast we, we talk a lot about, you know, personal tips and also practise tips.

And obviously we, we talked a little bit about . The practise side. Tell me a little bit, I know that you're a You've also as a family been actually offsetting your carbon and tell me how you've gone about that and which company you've been using.

Well, we, we looked into this quite, a while back actually, and probably before it was as popular as, as it is now and, and it was quite difficult because it was quite difficult to understand. There wasn't always necessarily the, the explanations or the transparencies from maybe early, sort of, you know, carbon offsetting. Companies, so we actually came across fairly recently a a fantastic, conglomerate really I suppose called ecology, and it's been set up by some people who come from different backgrounds, entrepreneurs, mostly very passionate about, you know, the planet as we are and and doing everything we can to offset.

And it's just the most amazing platform. So they called Ecology, they basically on the, on the, yeah, yeah, and there are others like it, but I was just really taken by these because they have just this great. Platform that basically they will say, put in what you do, how big is your family, you know, how many pets do you have?

We are currently carbon offsetting our pets, but given the amount coming out of both ends of them, you know, recently is, is probably a good thing, . Lots of wind going on in this house for some reason. So we offset for the pets as well.

And they basically work out, you know, what age, what size, you know, even if you're male or female, what your sort of general consumption is, and they'll give you a price. You can do it individually, you can do it per family, you can do it with your pets additionally. And it is so cheap.

I have no idea actually how cheap it is to offset your carbon. It's a couple of pounds a month, literally. For, for a family of 4, you know, it's nothing.

And then you can say whether or not you want extra things. Do you want to like consider, you know, relatives, do you want to add in a bit extra? And what they do is they then have a little forest.

You have a forest on your platform, and every month you get little trees added and over the month your trees grow and mature. And all you have to do is click over any one of your little buds in your forest or one of your trees, and it shows you, takes you directly to. The place and the people planting your trees, and it tells you all about them, why if it's South America, Central America, why they need to do it in that area.

You get the numbers of your trees, you see people with your stalks actually planting them. It is amazing. It's really engaging.

It's really interactive. It makes you actually feel like, this money is actually, I can visualise it. I can see my forest growing over time.

You can have people buy you extra trees for birthdays. And it's just a wonderful initiative that all the family have kind of become really engaged with. So.

Oh that's excellent, and I know you were talking a lot about also, you know, cause it's great to offset carbon. I think there's an issue, sometimes at business level. It it can be a cop out just to continue doing things exactly as you've done before, but at the end of the day.

You planting trees so it doesn't a bit of money offsetting, so I know you were talking a lot about packaging as well. You know, when you're, when you're going shopping, so looking for those options, I noticed one recently, you know, I like croissants and Sainsbury's have now done them where they were all in plastic, they're now in a cardboard with a little bit of film on them, which is immediately a choice. I've really over the last two years, stopped.

I buy a little bit of plastic, but it's really minimal, so things like olive oil in bottles, glass rather than plastic. And a lot of fruit is in often punnets that are made of plastic, but I've found places where you can get them in cardboard because plastic just doesn't go anywhere, does it? It, it stays around for, for centuries.

No, it doesn't exactly. An interesting thing that's coming up at them, I think people are really working on is using seaweed. Seaweed for fill wraps, etc.

As well. And even, and there's all sorts of different plant-based sort of bags that will actually dissolve in water, which are really popular in lots of places, and I looked into them as well. Problem is obviously they're very dissolvable in water, which isn't necessarily the best for the UK with all of our rain and you're carrying your shopping bags, .

I think we chatted before about how I was really doing, you know, every aspect of our lives. You know, we started looking at areas you just wouldn't think, and you kind of open a Pandora's box of when you start going down this right, what am I doing in the house to be as sort of sustainable as possible and, and look to be as environmentally friendly as possible, you start to realise how much is in your life that is one use waste that isn't, you wouldn't have even. Thought about it as not being sustainable, such as like Christmas wrapping paper because it's paper, but you can't recycle it.

Foil's a big one for me. I'm like, Oh, it's foil, it's metal. They melt it down.

And unless it's something like a tennis size bowl, you fold together and put in the recycle bin, they, they can't do anything with it. You crumple up foil and chuck it away, and if it's contaminated with food, it doesn't get recycled. And it's stuff like that you don't even think about.

So we very much started to say, right. Let's not use foil. What can be used instead.

So we, we use silicon. We use a lot of silicon lids, which are really bestile can be washed, dishwasher safe, can go in the microwave, silicon based baking implements and bowls, etc. And if you get takeaways and they come in plastic pots, you know, we have thousands of them now and they've become all of our fridge containers, etc.

. We keep all our coffee jars, they're used to store. We've got nuts and bolts and screws all alphabetized in the garage. They're all in coffee jars, you know, so.

Yeah, lots of areas where we started looking at. And I know you, it's also, you were talking, you know, about things like the wipes, which, you know, again, we're not always aware of, we think we can just flush them down the toilet, don't we? Well, absolutely, and to be honest, that was that was probably where all of this, you know, really started for me.

It was. It was very much a case that a couple of years ago I was, I was using wipes, face wipes, baby wipes, and I just assumed they're wipes, they feel like material, they feel like paper, they've got to be, you know. Biodegradable or flushable, and, and it was my sister-in-law who was like, no, and they're causing a lot of problems.

They're causing problems. The sewage wipes, they're causing problems when they get out into the sea, they're full of microplastics. And I was like, Right, OK.

And my first ever transition was moving to flushable wipes, and then it was moving to flushable biodegradable wipes because, as I say, it's a Pandora's box when you go down this. And then I was like, well, what else are we using on a daily basis? Health wise, so.

You know, even just daily maintenance of ourselves, and it's, where's the toilet roll coming from? What's the packaging? Where's the, you know, the toothpicks, the tooth floss, the toothbrushes we're using, you know, and we started moving more towards bamboo and charcoal based, .

Products that were sort of biodegradable in those areas and cotton buds especially, so we use sort of bamboo based cotton buds with sustainable plastic ones because they turn up everywhere don't they? Absolutely, we now have metal straws as well. We, we have a box of metal straws that we use because we, we don't use any even paper straws.

So these are re-washable and you know, potentially will last forever. So even paper straws, it's great, it's a move away from plastic. But it's still, you know, it's what's the carbon offset for producing paper straws that we use once, you know.

So yeah, so many areas, it, it literally is a whole, whole sort of, And I think as, as vets who are, you know, committed to animals, obviously also, you know, just the fair trade elements to all this as well, it's important that we kind of lead the way, you know, from a community aspect as well. So have you got any sort of last thoughts or ideas on, because I, I think there's also a a a temptation that when people see all of this, they go, I can't make a difference whereas as you've shown. It's making small steps, isn't it, and it may start as simple as I'm not gonna buy wipes that can't be recycled.

You know, so it doesn't need to be massive things for us to make a difference. The more we do as we grow, we then try to do more things, so maybe a little tip just either a, you know, a final personal tip or or something that you think practicers could be doing just to . You know, be a, a more of an example to the community as well.

Yeah, so, I mean, I think the big thing is, isn't it, it's, it's difficult in practise because we, we do have a lot of plastic that is one time use. We can't get around it, syringes, you know, medical sort of equipment is. Basically, aprons, PPE, there's been a lot of gloves, a lot more sort of plastic wastage.

And I think we've all been feeling it. I've seen a lot of forums, people discussing how bad they feel. And, and I think, as you say, there's so many simple things that you can do, even when it comes to, to sort of your lunches, etc.

Or you, you know, what we do in sort of as a, as a practise when we're looking at what we're using in terms of sort of things that might be in the canteen or the staff room or, you know, sort of, can we have our own sort of coffee mug that everyone, you know, help morale as well, you know, the practise has these refillable coffee things that we're using. I say I love silicon for everything. It's microwavable friendly, it's dishwasher friendly.

You no longer need to be thinking about plastic Tupperware necessarily, and it is recyclable and reusable. But for a practise itself, why not have a window box that is like a, you know, a bee friendly little wild garden just outside that shows people that you're involved, you know, why not, instead of where you might need to replace chairs in your waiting room, look at different alternatives for, for what you could use for that, you know. If you've got hand wash stations for people, you showed me a great bottle you'd picked up from like the ocean Project, which is made from ocean plastic, and you can, you can use refillable things.

You know, it's, it's simple little things like that, which are even just going that extra way. I think I said to you, didn't I? I, we were chatting earlier that This week, I thought we'd made a mistake with the bins going up because my green bin had nothing in it, hardly anything at all.

We, we have collections every 2 weeks. And I thought it was on the wrong week. It wasn't.

We just are simply taking the time to look closely at things that we would have chucked in the green bin and find in the recyclable. And one thing for me was we were probably quite lazy as a family. We had tins full of food or jars that were a bit difficult to clean.

We probably would have chucked them rather than actually taking the time, the extra 5 minutes to get a. You know, a bottle cleaner in there and really clean them out so they don't get rejected from recycling, and now we're much more careful to say, right, shove them all in a big box. We'll have 10 minutes on a weekend where we clean everything and it goes in the recycle and, and even little steps like that don't cost anything.

I mean, you're actively sort of participating more in the recycling movements, so. I was interested in your point about the silicon based instead of tin foil. What, what sort of companies are you using for that, .

Well, one of the big things if you look at any of this sort of kitchen equipment or these sort of, you know, floss or dental sticks or anything or toothbrushes and you come up with bamboo, it's all very well going well they're recyclable and they're sustainable. But as you said about Fair trade, they're so cheap, a lot of. And you have to actually then think, well, if I'm using bamboo for everything, am I contributing to deforestation somewhere?

You know, are there potential factories where employees are under really poor conditions and you're actually, you know, they're not fair trade at all. But I'm sitting in my house going, well, it's fine. I'm not using plastic, I'm using bamboo.

And actually, you know, there's an orangutan that has had half its forest wiped out because they're, they're clearing it for bamboo. So. We do whatever company we look for, we do dig in a little bit more to see that they are practising fair trade and, you know, actual sustainability in terms of how they grow their, their bamboo or their cotton, etc.

As well. So, most of these companies if they're very transparent, have little virtual tours where they take you around the factory and they chat to actual employees and you can see lots of reviews, you know, based in their own countries, etc. From people that use their, their products.

So that's what I would recommend personally is dig a bit more into each country you're sourcing from as well. Gemma, that's fantastic. Thanks for all you're doing for the environment, you know, at home and also in work and I'm looking forward to the big reveal and if you, hopefully, God willing, Liveture all goes ahead as normal, we we might see you at our pizza and prosecco nights as well.

Whoop whoop. You promised me an invite for that. No I'll drink you out of Prosecco, so come on.

Gemma, thanks again and thanks everyone for listening and we'll see you on another podcast very soon. Take care, bye bye.