Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick from the Webinarett welcoming you to another episode of Vet Chat, the UK's number one veterinary podcast. . I really love LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is a great way of meeting new friends. We've had new speakers through LinkedIn, and it's a really useful platform and obviously I have a real interest in sustainability and. Going through LinkedIn, probably a few months ago, I spotted this guy called Mike Curran, who is the chief executive of XL Vets in Ireland.
I related but not joined together with Excel vets in the UK and we, we met up on LinkedIn and we've had a few chats since, and I've been really inspired by some of the fantastic things that Mike is facilitating in Ireland. As the CEO of the Excel er Vets in Ireland, so I was really keen to get him on to come and talk about one of my favourite subjects, which is our whole area of sustainability and how we as vets can be seen as part of the solution rather than part of the problem. Mike was telling me about one of his vets in one of the practises, one of the Excel vet practises called Kieran Devani, who is also on the line today, who's been doing amazing work at his practise.
As he says, it's all teamwork, it's not just him, but doing some really amazing work there. So, just like to welcome you both to the podcast and thank you so much for giving up your time to speak to me about one of my favourite topics. Thanks Anthony, thank you, thanks Anthony.
I think it's really interesting with this, one of the things I loved about chatting to you, Mike, apart from your love of Liverpool FC as well, which we'll park to one side for the moment. But it was also that . Desire just to get on and do things and you've already been doing things.
I, I've had the pleasure of reading your sustainability report, which is amazing and also I think is acting as a real catalyst for change, almost at government level because of some of the fantastic work you've been doing. Perhaps you can. Tell us a little bit about that sustainability report.
I suppose the origin came from the question, what is sustainability and what can we do about it? So we've had a lot of speakers that we've met in person, we've seen online and everybody's given us the national picture and the international picture and globally what we're doing right, what we're doing wrong, where we're in trouble. And, and it all felt very vast and huge.
And how can we make a difference? And do we really matter? And somebody else is going to deal with it.
And then dialogue between our own members, the team in the office, suppliers, organisations that we work closely with everybody said the same thing. We got to be more sustainable. We got to the right thing.
And my question back to everybody was well explain sustainability to me. And, and actually this is what tripped up a lot of people. They fully couldn't clearly understand what sustainability actually meant.
And to that point, then what can we do about it? We all know the climate's in a, in a troubled way. We all know if we don't change, it's going to be in a worse way.
So from that conversation, we worked with a few focus groups and start to understand, well, OK, let's go and research out there in Ireland. What is in academia, what is out there in veterinary regarding sustainability. How do we take a greener approach?
The most of the dialogue back was the biggest effect the vets have is on herd health emissions, herd emissions. So to affect that healthier herd would be more productive with less emissions. But again, to do that, well, we got to live and breathe it ourselves.
What are we doing in our own homes? What are we doing in the four walls of our practises, our offices. And again, next step on that was actually to identify is there anybody in Ireland doing it?
And the answer was no. So we had a choice, we wait around for someone to tell us what to do, regulation to come in and force us to do it, or let's begin a journey ourselves. So our journey simply began with understanding that we are not sustainability experts.
There's other people that work on energy and audits of businesses and enterprises better than us, and let's go find them. We began a tender process, 7 companies and we whittled down to 1. We selected a company in Ireland called Ecomerri, and Ecomeritt specialise in SMEs, ideal for veterinary.
And where they'll come in for 6 months, heavily audit the business and come out with a report, on all of the things that the business can do to improve. It's detailed, it's measured. We have the carbon output of the business.
And from that to gain a certification, we sign up to a 5 year agreement independently auditable every year. To ensure that we're doing what we said we're going to do. And for us, the primary reason is that we surpass our 2030 emission reduction targets.
Hopefully 2 years earlier than that. So, sounded like a great idea. And we in Excel vets in the office said, well, if we're going to look to our members to do it, we got to do this ourselves first.
We went through the journey. We tested the organisation, ourselves and eco merit and actually came out of that with a certification we're very proud of. And we have just completed our year one audit and we're ahead of where we need to be.
So we've made changes to make our business, the works we do, more efficient with less emissions. And I know Kieran has then been involved in the next pilot stage, which is I think there's 4 or 5 centres that Excel vets are involved with. Kieran's in Kilkenny has now also passed that this eco mark as well, has Ecomerris.
And that was exactly it. They said the next phase was actually to, to recruit interested member businesses and we would subsidise it with government funding and there would be minimum costs for the first, the early adopters and really get them on board and start creating a message around what veterinary can do and get people excited about it. And, and Kieran's practise was one of our initial early adopters and subsequently the first veterinary practise in Ireland to have any commerce certification.
Fantastic. Kieran, tell us maybe a little bit about the journey and what have been some of the measures that you've put in place to actually start to reduce your emissions. Obviously you're also a mixed practise, so presumably you're also beginning to start talking to farmers about that journey and they're perhaps asking you questions, seeing what you've been getting up to.
Yeah, so I suppose like Mike says, when everybody some mentions sustainability or the environment, but we we're all aware of the challenges that the world is facing. So like everybody else, we wanted to play our part. So the issue there was never an issue among the team of wanting to be involved in this project.
I suppose what what every practise needs are every small business, they definitely need somebody to drive that on. So our practise manager, Aisling Ragget would be, would have been the main driver behind the whole project. So once the team decided that this is something we'd like to pursue, Aisling was really the person who kicked that on and saw it through to completion.
So we had a, we had an audit where we, they, they, they looked at our environmental performance and practises within the, the, the practise as a whole, and that audit kind of fed back and it showed that I suppose 25% of our carbon output was coming from electricity usage and that was across three premises. But 75% of our carbon footprint came from our carbon footprint was about 63.5 1000 tonnes, and 75% of that came from running practise vehicles.
So, practise owned vehicles and vehicles owned by staff members going to and from. The nature of our business being, you know, I suppose, providing out of hours cover, covering large distances, all that adds to the cost. That was quite surprising to us.
I suppose initially it was probably a bit daunting. We're we're wondering, you know, how do we how do we tackle that. But the way that they The orders were structured, and the feedback we got was really useful.
We, we were given goals that were attainable initially, and, and some things like, you know, I suppose we we put in, sensors in most of the, the, practise rooms and in consult rooms in the pharmacy, that would come on and off that that added savings. We, we had a water cooler, where we, we all use disposable plastic cups. We got rid of those straight away.
There we had looked at, putting in maybe solar panels and that was something we've been toying with for a while, but, that was recommended that we pursue that straight away and we did. We looked, we got an assessment of insulation in the building. We had just, developed one of the buildings and refurbished it a few years earlier and put in a, a system for.
Air conditioning and we were advised that we didn't really need to have that running as we had it running all the time that we could just have it, have an airflow system running through that. So that reduced, reduced the energy there by 35%. And again, just simple things like, like timers of radiators and the heating systems, putting those on timers so that they come on off peak, the nurses and, and, kennel staff here rather than.
The dryer and the washing machine during the day. Now they're used at off-peak times as well. And all this has led to like a reduction of about 28% of our electricity usage and bills over the last year since since we started.
So that's that's been a huge benefit overall. Which is really massive, I think, you know, when I talk about this, the first thing is you have to measure things because if you don't measure, you don't know how you're doing. So it's fantastic that you've been able to see in that short time, 28% reduction because, Well, you know, we have to probably reduce our carbon by about 50%.
In the next 1010 years. That sounds like a lot, whereas 5% every year is much more attainable, isn't it? And obviously you get those easy low hanging fruits, which is the you know, the sensors to cut lights off, to actually put things on timers, etc.
That's it. Even things like just recycling that we have the recycling bins there, but we label them correctly and, and again, because it became a topic that people were discussing in the practise, that kind of encourages everybody on and and people are more are more willing to comply and discuss what we're doing and then people start to see cheapers, you know, the, the, the drugs that arrive, how their package. There's so much packaging there.
Now obviously it's being recycled, but if we could reduce that as well, and I think Mike and Excel vets are involved in speaking to the supply companies about reducing the amount of packaging that comes through. I think that's great. Yeah, and there's many other projects coming from this this initial white paper, and that was one of them an immediate action by companies.
I think the bane of a lot of our veterinary practises is cardboard. And you know, outers without us, withouters and actually we're pushing back on suppliers and ensuring we don't need that. If we order fluids by this volume, you can come in the container and that's it.
But getting back to Kieran, Kieran and his journey through it, definitely one of the differences of this audit system, and the reason we selected is the minutiae of detail they go into and practises, even in our office, they took our bins out the back and went through everything that was in it and actually went through it to Kes level because they went through the very same. And you know, talking about sea resealing windows anywhere they felt a draught, excessive use of water, every minutiae of energy saving possible. And for our office here in Excel vets in Ireland, we don't have a huge property, but we ended up with over 2.5 pages of work tasks that can be done over the coming 5 years.
In other words, there's lots of early easy adopters hanging fruit that you'd mentioned. But then there's other works that can be done and they can be done over slowly over time and they all have an effect. And that's the difference.
It's not direction going, you need to have your insulation looked at or you should check your water, your water flow is X, reduce it by Y. It actually tells us what to do to do it, and that's the big difference. But actually what makes it even more compelling now, you know, I put solar panels on my roof 14 years ago because I just felt it was the right thing to do, but now it's becoming economically sensible to do it.
So if you've managed to save 28% on your electy bills, as we say in Liverpool. And that's been a massive saving in cash as well, hasn't it? It has, and again, that's, you know, we are a business at the end of the day.
We're a small business. So, so if we're going to invest time and effort in obviously doing something that's that's morally right from an environmental point of view. As a small business we need to see a return.
So that that's been a huge benefit that we can see straight away. But again, like our largest, the largest part of our carbon footprint is our vehicle fleet. So again, we installed 12 solar panels on our roof this year, but our roof can take more.
So if we are moving towards more of an electric fleet, that's something that we can look into utilising in the future as well. So there's lots of things that I suppose there's lots of food for thought there and lots of . Ideas that we got from the report and like Mike says, some really valuable small and low hanging fruit that you can initiate straight away, but then other topics that challenge you and make you think, well, jeepers, that's something we could do down the line and that's something that we can, I suppose, might not be achievable straightaway, but something we should certainly think about.
So one of our partners, he will, he's next to you to change his car and he's going to get an electric vehicle. So he's going to be the guinea pig for the practise, initially anyway. And this is the other thing, you know, we know that that's a big capital cost.
You've probably got, you know, a lot of cars within the business. If you try and change them all at once, that is exorbitantly expensive, but if you can do it over 3 to 4 years, again, you're seeing those carbon reductions each year by taking those cars on. It's not something I think as, as we've all said, some people think, oh, where do we start?
It is taking those small steps, isn't it, and you know, to get one EV car in. To test it, there is often with EV cars this range anxiety that people talk about, which is actually becoming more or less and less of a problem because of course a lot of these cars will do 30 or 400 miles in a day, which even the busiest large animal vet is unlikely to be doing that sort of distance every day and this is where you'll almost need to see how much mileage do you do on a daily basis and is this something that, You need to worry about or in fact, it's something that. You, you know, you're worrying about unnecessarily a next stage of ours is actually to get a group of vets mixed practise, large animal and assess their actual mileage because there is range anxiety.
I moved to an EV 6 months ago. I had range anxiety when I got into it and for the 1st 6 weeks of using it, but I wouldn't go back now. And subsequently, and like I previously mentioned, I have my solar panel has been installed just before Christmas.
So I mean, I'm taking the full move into that. But we are going to look at vets and actually showcase. There are going to be all, you know, nuances in that and certain vets that have a wide range area and it might be more difficult, but we do know what the improvements of technology like Toyota have announced a new battery.
Audi have a new battery. The new Toyota is 1150 kilometres with a super fast full charge within 10 minutes. It's phenomenal that the rapid pace on it, primarily first question comes back from me from Fets's, does it to a horse box.
And the answer is yes, my own vehicle takes 1.8 tonne. So it is achievable.
So what we have to do, we all kind of know what we have to do. But it really helps if certainly from our point in Excel vets in Ireland is to assess, yes, this is a a route that we can go down and actually create a case study and the rationale of why you would do it or not do it and just present the case. But we can see there's more and more has a lot more yeses and certainly a lot more opportunity to progress veterinary in Ireland.
As part of our environmental management system, we have to track fuel usage of vehicles and distance travelled. So Aisling has been monitoring all that and and again it's led to how we manage the practise a little differently. So rather than somebody heading off on a call and then taking another call in a different area.
Try to assign vets to particular areas. They, they stay within that area and it reduces look, you're always going to have your, your blue light calls where somebody has to tear off and do something. But if you can keep a vet in a geographical area and again when we're booking in work, we try to do the same thing, keep people in a particular area so they're not having to drive more than they need to.
Sometimes it's just spending a bit of time to think about work flow and you can get really great efficiencies that way, can't you? Yeah. This is really good and I know that with the solar panels you are getting some grants off government, so I think where we see that governments can help, businesses can help, but individuals as well, if we all work together, we achieve it quicker.
But I think the corollary of that is, you know, in the UK. The government's taken a bit of a backward step in some areas on the environment. That shouldn't mean that we sort of say, well, you know, they're not doing it, we don't need to do it.
I think as individuals, we still have a responsibility, as businesses we have a corporate responsibility because we can't wait necessarily for government, because government. Historically seem to move quite slowly, don't they? They do this challenges that certainly in Ireland there's great opportunities with grants and subsidies available.
There is an encouragement to get solar at home with no VAT. There's grants available for homeowners, which is fantastic. That's one of the reasons I'm going after it.
But there's also similar for businesses in Ireland. And that's because we need more and more early adopters to come on board. OK.
There are really good business reasons why we should be doing this as well as The the knowledge that we're doing the right thing. Actually, a little nugget of one of the reasons why we started this whole project. And we were talking about that word sustainability, people not understanding it.
But actually it was more, more vets coming up to me and saying, Mike, I think we should do something. My kids keep coming home from school and asking, Dad, Mom, what are we doing about it? And it was brilliant to see that upward pressure coming from kids at home, to learn at school.
They're doing the right thing at school, but what's happening at home? What's happening in the business. So it's really interesting that some of them are, are vet business owners coming in with that query.
But subsequently for a business point of view, yes, there are commercial opportunities, . And value to go after this, certainly from a cost reduction, because what we do know is energy is only going to go one way, which is upwards. Absolutely.
And it's actually quite nice to have solar panels. I put batteries in this year and to see that my bill has gone down and down and down and I'm not paying for, let's face it, some of the energy companies have been greedy, er, certainly in the UK over the last year or so, so to be able to take control of your own energy is, is actually quite empowering, isn't it, for the individual and for the company. Look, it certainly is, and, and from a business point, anything that we can help with cost reduction as well as doing the right thing is going to be more sustainable for any business, no matter what are the pressure points.
But definitely another key factor is in the recruitment retention of vets within the veterinary industry. And more and more vets are coming out, they want to work with the business is doing the right thing. And we know that's a key factor in that members are coming to us.
And they want to know our, you know, our practises in Excel vet member practise and what they're doing about it. So are they taking a greener approach. And, and that is part of our recruitment now.
So, again, our interest is, we have 3 members, 5 clinics gone through, and we're looking for more and more to join this journey on us. And it would be great if we had 3 to 5 every year and suddenly we get through it in the next few years. BVA did a survey and they showed that 89% of vets and vet nurses are interested in sustainability.
We do our sustainability summit as part of our virtual congress. I did it for the first time two years ago when I was a bit worried that I might have one man and his dog there on a Tuesday afternoon with me. The good thing about webinars is nobody knows how many people are in the room, but there were 300.
This, this year we had 450 at a similar, you know, afternoon time, so the appetite is definitely there. I think it's great that people are seeing the problem, they're beginning to discern. How to deal with it, but actually it's great to see people like you, Kieran and Mike actually taking action because.
It's very easy for this to be a talk shop and one of the other things that we're doing is we've got the veterinary green discussion forum, which I know you're gonna be joining us this year, Mike in down in London, well next June. And the key for that is to be going each year till 2030, but to really encourage businesses, some of whom, quite big businesses don't seem to be making a lot of progress at the moment, but learning from each other, being encouraged. And in some ways, if you see somebody doing this, and you fear that being left behind, however it happens, I don't mind as long as we start moving and beginning to decarbonize.
Look at biodiversity, which is really important as well. And as Kieran, you were saying, having people scrutinising your bins is, is not a bad thing. No, no, no, and like while that audit, I suppose Mike emphasise this, it was really in depth, you know, they, they looked at everything in the building in our cars, how we utilised everything.
But, but the report we got back was so useful. It was easily understood. It was plain, it was laid out and the action points were so useful because it gives you a direction of travel.
And you know, once, once again, I suppose every practise or every small business is going to need somebody that's hugely, hugely passionate maybe to drive it on because we can all become a little bit. I was complacent and lax after a while, and we've been very lucky here with Aisling that she's really, she's really kept us all on the straight and narrow when it comes to that, and she knew, she, the, the management system whereby we're reviewing our process, our progress annually. She's monitoring all that all the time and looking to see how we can improve and what difference and small changes we can make all the time.
And that, that adds enthusiasm among the team as well, you know, because there's somebody there that's enthusiastic, that becomes infectious across the team. I think it's, it's great what you're doing, but perhaps what are three tips that perhaps each of you would give to a practise that's maybe looking at this at the moment. Doesn't know where to start, .
What are the sort of three easy tips that would make a massive difference for them? And how do you just, does this need to be top down or does it need to be bottom up, or does it need to be a bit of both to make sure that it works effectively? Perhaps, Kieran you first.
I suppose within the practise. There's no, it, it can come top down, but really the whole team have to decide that this is the direction of travel you want to go in and I think most people would buy into that now. Most in there was no resistance in our practise here.
I say everybody wants to make a contribution, but like Mike says, sometimes we just don't know where to start. So the very fact that Excel vets facilitated that, that, they put us on the road, they got us, they got us set up with eco merit. They got the, the audits put in place.
That was a huge help because that was the start. So it does help if you've got somebody offering something. You, if you want to make small changes, you can look at your energy usage.
You can start monitoring that. You can look at things like, like sensors and rooms. You can look at putting your radiators and timers, and they're all things that were fed in.
But initial, I think that that initial audit was really useful and that really came from Excel vets and, and Mike's Mike's drive and, and his, his ambition there to, to move Excel vets in that direction. So the measurement is really important and just as an aside, bets are staying in the UK have created a carbon calculator, so some practicess may not want to put loads of money into a professional audit as, as you've done, Mike. There are some tools out there that will give them a ballpark figure that at least gets them started, but I think my worry is that we get too obsessed with carbon and we don't do enough then on.
The reduce reduce, reuse, recycle and obviously biodiversity as well and we similarly are an investors in the environment green business, which is the highest mark. And the, the reason I'd like that particular assessment tool is that it does look at everything in a holistic way, because if you just look at carbon, if we just decide to plant trees. You know, in the wrong places and that affects biodiversity, that's not good either, so thanks so much, Kieran, that's brilliant on the measurement.
Mike, maybe 1 or 2 from you. Yeah, I probably looking in threefold, certainly the primary one is cultural. You have to want to do this for the right reasons.
If you go down this journey because you feel you have to, you're not going to do it right. And it has to be the whole team. You need to buy in from everyone.
So if you're the business owner, business principal, and you believe that the team aren't with you, it's not going to work. And likewise, if the team want to do it and you're not behind them. So culture is really important.
Go do it. The next thing is the things that we need to go do. And I would say is nothing is too small.
No change is too small. Because the more small change you do, the more you normalise it within the practise. OK.
And the final one then is, measure it, you know, reduce it, report on it. And, and, and know that you're making a difference. And again, it comes from that change to be new and a good thing to do to be normal.
This is how what we do in veterinary. You know, obviously we met up on LinkedIn, Mike, and we've developed a friendship around sustainability around football as well. I maybe I should ask the question at this point, Kieran, are you a red or are you a red?
Or are you not interested in football? I I'm gonna pass. I'm gonna pass on that.
I, I don't know if we, we may be fired out later, but, it's really inspiring what you are both doing. I think it's just so important that everybody does pitch in on this. As I say, our little, our target is to have 300 practises with solar panels on the roof.
I'm perhaps going to try and half nick your, your one mic, so we're, we're slowly, . Taking that down, I've got my own practise building that I rent to one of the corporates in the UK which I'm trying to get them to allow me to put solar on. We, we just do need to move quickly cos I think it was Kate Brant who's the chief sustainability officer at Google said this is the decisive decade.
If we wait 10 years and do this in 10 years' time, in some ways there's no point in doing it, so I'd just encourage you to carry on. In the fantastic. And, and I think there's certainly a lot more.
I mean, we had a fantastic conference back in January in Ireland and we had Rachel Hayton over from Valveustain and and Rachel presented and she was blown away. This was a conference with a freeze weather warning and we a full room of 180 stakeholders from all of veterinary farming, agriculture, government. It was a fantastic event.
We've just completed another one. We're working with Excel vets in the UK, sustain and Vetsalis, and we're looking for more collaborative approaches. This isn't insular about me and I, this is about all of us.
So just to your point, we're not going to wait around. We are going to make a difference in a change. You know what, we had 5% of members, 10% we'll get to, then it's going to be 15 or 20% and we'll get to that early adopter to new and should do to normality, and that's really the goal here.
And as you say, it is. An advantage, a competitive advantage both economically, but also people want to work for companies who seem to give us stuff about stuff, and this is an important area to give us stuff about. Absolutely.
But as a small business owner, it has been like economically beneficial to us to be part of this as well, you know, a 28% reduction in your electricity usage in a year is not anything to be sniffed at, I don't think. Not with the way that electricity and gas was going up in the last 12 to 24 months. So, Kieran, again, it's great to hear people on the ground doing it and doing it practically.
We have an online business, obviously it's much easier for us to look at some of these areas, you know, a veterinary practise is a complex business. So the numbers that you're doing in the first year are hugely inspiring for me as well, so thanks for all that you're doing. Thank you, Anthony.
Thanks both of you, thanks everyone for listening. Do reach out, Kieran and and Mike, I'm sure would be happy to, to answer questions. We've got lots of resources on the website as well.
I think as Nike would say, just do it. Thanks everyone for listening, take care, bye bye.
