Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick from the webinar Vet, welcoming you to another lunch and learn webinar, really, really er fortunate today to have Sarah Heath and David Black on the line who are gonna be speaking today. The topic is joining the dots, your guide to building the sustainable practise of the future, and this is a webinar in conjunction with IVC er Evidencia and Vet Sustain. Sarah's gonna start us off.
Sarah is the group director of sustainability for IVC Evidencia and leads the development and implementation of the Positive paw print sustainability strategy across the whole of IVC's er Evidencia's global business. Before joining IVC, Sarah was responsible for the development and implementation of sustainability, corporate responsibility, and communication strategies in businesses such as SSP Group and WH Smith's. And then David is a veterinary surgeon, he's the senior director of Paragon Veterinary Group up in the Lake District.
It's an independent mixed veterinary practise, and he's also the managing director of Vet Sala, a consultancy supporting livestock veterinary collaboration worldwide. He is a founder, director and treasurer of Vet Sustain and has just stepped down from being president of the British Cattle Veterinary Association, whose meeting I think was last week. I was at WSAVA David, so I, I missed it, I always enjoy going to the BCVA.
David's clinical expertise lies in dairy cattle reproduction and advanced breeding technologies including embryo transfer and IVF. He's an Emeritus RCVS recognised specialist in cattle health and reproduction and production, sorry, he's a Fellow of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, and he's also a really passionate advocate for veterinary sustainability, one health, and vet led business, David. Thanks very much, Sarah, I'm gonna let you start.
I'm gonna sit back, turn my video off, turn the audio off, and I'm really looking forward to these two presentations. Thanks, over to you. Brilliant.
Thank you, Anthony, and thank you for, for having us along today. What we wanted to do was to was to introduce a new initiative which we've been working on, together with Vet Sustain, and which is, which is what we're calling the sustainable practise of the future. It sort of out outlines some of the steps that that you can take to make a difference in your, in your practise.
But first of all, just in terms of, I suppose, setting the scene and probably the reason that most of you have joined. The call today and we're all really, really feeling the impact of the climate and nature crisis. We're seeing it in our communities, we're seeing it in our practises, we're seeing it with our patients, we've all just experienced yet another summer of extreme temperatures, more records being broken.
Wildfires, not just on the, on the, on the TV screens, but actually, you know, we're seeing them in the UK, we're seeing them across Europe, and we're actually also seeing the impact on the pets that we're treating from, from, from heat stress, from livestock, and also starting to see changing patterns of disease. We're seeing the impact on biodiversity loss, and an actual practical impact in terms of, in terms of buildings impacted by flood, by fire. So we know, we know that we need to, we need to take action.
There's more data in terms of the impacts that veterinary care can have, which should help us to, to identify what it is that we need to do. At IVC Evidenciaa, we, we, we have sort of a a technical, technical team, that, that, that report to me that that they're calculating greenhouse gas emissions. You can, you can see if you look at the, The, the little pie chart on the left hand side, that is our, that is our full carbon footprint.
The dark green piece is is what we call scope 3, that is about 87% of our, of our footprint, and that is mostly our supply chain. It's what we buy, it's pharmaceuticals, it's nutrition, it's consumables, it's waste. So that's a really big part of the challenge.
But then if we look at, our operational emissions, that's, that's the, the bigger pie in the middle. You can start to see where, typical impacts of, veterinary care would be. So, almost 20% in anaesthetics, from the procedures that we carry out.
23% is heating and hot water for our buildings. We know that we're using a lot of gas, which is, which is, which is, Difficult to mitigate in terms of emissions. Electricity, about 12%, and this is heavily reduced because we buy 85% renewable.
But anyway, that gives you a sense of sort of where it all sits. Fleet emissions, a lot is down to the, the travel that our vets do. And then for IVC because we, we, we own a number of pet crematoriums, a, a big chunk is in, in crematorium fuels.
So that's, that's, that's one that we, Need to look at in terms of in terms of reductions and investing in new low carbon technologies. So that's a business sort of breakdown and but then if you look on the the other side of the screen, you can actually see the breakdown in emissions for a specific procedure. So I suppose that, that, that shows you that 30% is in travel, that, about 20% is consumables that are being used.
Then 20% is anaesthetics. Again, we're seeing that as a big theme. And then 24% is pharmaceuticals.
So, we've got lots of this data, and there's more of it coming and there's more measurement going on. But the real question is, how do you distil this into, into the action that you're actually gonna take when you walk into the practise in the morning? What, what, what do you, what do you do with all of this?
So we were very conscious that it can feel very overwhelming, it can be very difficult to know where to start, what will have the greatest impact, and this is where the sustainable practise of the future project came. So the aim is very much to be supporting veterinary professionals really anywhere across the UK and actually sort of anywhere in in any market as well to actually, Identify what your next steps could be in terms of improving sustainability. As I said at the beginning, it's a partnership between IBC Evidencia with Vet Sustain and MSD Animal Health, and what we wanted to do was to bring together all of the combined expertise that we have, to actually to to share this and make it easily available.
So what we've come up with is just over 50 steps, they're applicable to small animal, to farm, to equine, and also to referral settings. They're aligned to vet sustained impact areas, so warming, waste, water, welfare, wildlife, and well-being. They're actually also, we also indicate where it actually makes, financial sense as well, because we know that that that's also, that's important too.
We're, we're All of, all of our veterinary practises are are businesses as well, so it's important to see the contribution to financial sustainability as well as an environmental and social sustainability. We really wanted to make it just quick, easy, and really, really accessible, easy for people to dip into, and then critically, freely available. So, where we started was last November at London Vet show, that we we, we came up with a walkthrough exhibit.
We had fantastic support from Closest to our Media at London Vet show, who actually gave us a really, really great stand. And you can see at the bottom, myself and Kat Curtis in my team who, who led the, the project with Laura Gelda Robertson in her role as chair of vet, chair of Vets Sustain at that time, and Jim Hopkins, who, heads up the Vets Sustain sustainable Farming Group, and is also, one of our senior farm vets at Steffan Vets in South Wales. We had such a fantastic response from attendees at London Vet show, people loving walking, walking around this, this mockup of a practise, and you can just see on the, on the mockup, the pink dots.
So, so there were pink dots around showing you where the, where the changes were that you can make. And you can see on the right hand side of the slide, an example of one of those pink dots, of giving a really, really short summary of the action that could be taken. And then showing the species that it was relevant to, so in this case, surgery, relevant to small animal, large animal and equine, and then the impact it could have.
So, and so you can see the impact areas again, as we said, that's the, the vet sustain Ws with financial benefit there as well. And then what we've done, and just launched in the last, in the last month, has been turn this into a digital tool. We wanted, we were very conscious that only a certain number of people could actually see the physical exhibit, so we wanted to turn this into something digital that was free to access and, and that we could share sort of on an unlimited basis with people across the profession.
So what I wanted to invite you to do was to, was to actually, look at the QR code and actually click to go into. The sustainable practise tool, and we're gonna do a little bit of a walkthrough of some of the areas and then I'm gonna hand over to, to David, who, who'll tell you a little bit about they've used, how he's used it in his practise. So I'm just gonna move into it on my slide as well.
So if we click to enter. You can see that as you, as you, as you go through, you, you get the, the information on the species impact, the impact area. And then you start your journey, and you can essentially click into any of these rooms.
And we've got an area specifically which is about farm and equine, which is one that that David's gonna, gonna talk to you more about. But if I start by, I'm just gonna walk through just a few of them, but just give you some indications so you can see. So we go into the waiting room.
And if we click here by the reception desk, so one action that could be taken in a waiting room is actually encouraging your clients to get involved, to, put waiting room collection bins for hard to recycle items, so that could be medical blister packs, which is something that we do very successfully. IVC in the UK, something that our, customers really like pet owners owners like, our clinical teams like, it's actually a great opportunity to partner with a supplier. We're actually partnering with MSD on this, and, it, it's actually a positive one in terms of, you know, potentially increasing footfall in the practise as well, as well as being really important in terms of managing waste.
So that's one as an example. And then if we just pick another in terms of the waiting room, obviously, many of us in our practises, this is where, this is where you'll be, have a, display of some pet food. And it's about thinking about how to have the conversation with the pet owner, thinking about, the pet's biggest impact being really what they eat.
So actually making sure that, There isn't that they're being fed the recommended amount, so we're preventing against obesity, so that's all about the pet's welfare obviously, but avoiding food waste and actually thinking about recommending dry foods which have a lower, a lower carbon impact. So that gives you a little bit of a sense for the for the waiting room. If we then we then can go back.
To their home and then you pick another room to go in. So if we go into the consulting room, which is obviously one where, so many of those kind of client conversations are happening, but if we, the dots are sort of covering a range of different areas, but actually one which I suppose is an alternative to actually having the pet, and the owner in the consulting room. Is actually considering telecare, as you remember when we looked at the pie charts, it talked, talked about what a big chunk of our emissions, our travel is.
So actually, considering where telecare can actually play a role, it's more convenient for the, for, for the client. It can actually be less stress, for the patient. And in the right, in the right setting will actually be, be better in terms of a treatment.
It won't obviously it won't always, but actually thinking about that. And again, you can see here, appropriate for all species types, and, yeah, and impacts in terms of emissions, and also financial, it's cost effective as well. And then if we just pick another one at random, that wasn't the one I meant to go, oh yes, it was the one I meant to go into, but actually having the conversations with pet owners about the impact that their pets can have on the environment.
This is where we can have a massive impact in terms of biodiversity. So just having those conversations about the impact that cats might have on, on bird life, at the right time of day to actually let them out so that they're less likely to, to be, to be, catching birds. The same in terms of dogs and their impact on ground nesting birds, but actually also just responsible ownership in terms of picking up, dog poo, and actually thinking about when to let, animals out when they've just had their parasite treatment and actually taking a cautious approach there.
So if we go into another area, I'm just gonna do a couple more just to give you a sense. So, the theatre is obviously an area where we have the potential to have a really massive impact. The biggest area and this, this, this drawing here is a, is, is, is both is, is an anaesthetic machine.
So if we start, by looking at, anaesthetic, sort of, in terms of flow rates. Going for lower flow anaesthesia has the potential, to make a massive difference in terms of your, your emissions. So you can see here it says that emissions from anaesthesia can account for, yeah, 20 to 30% of a typical practise carbon footprint.
So actually, by moving towards lower flow, it's safer for the patients. We know it actually cuts cost, . And it's better for emissions.
So depending on the flow rate that you're starting from, that can be cuts of 25 to 50%. So make it, but makes a difference, for, for all three areas, patients, profit, and, and the planet. So really important area to look at.
Other areas in terms of anaesthesia is thinking again about your anaesthetic agents. So moving away from using nitrous and actually considering a move from IO to SIO, which is 74% less polluting. And then the final one in terms of anaesthesia.
Is actually looking at capturing your carbon emissions. So 90% of the inhaled anaesthetic agent is emitted to the atmosphere as waste. Something that, one of the solutions that that is currently being trialled across all of, IVCs, equine and referral sites in the UK and also a lot of our small animal practises, is a sage tech system which will actually capture the waste emissions, and the objective is that that becomes something which is circular and recycled and brought back .
And brought back for reuse. So again, a really, really important one in terms of capturing emissions. The only other one I was gonna click on in terms of theatre is around, is around, surgical textiles.
So again, this is something, this is actually sharing information on a, a really, revolutionary, technology, made by a company called Revolution Zero. Who are making reusable gowns, reusable drapes with really innovative polymers, which is actually cutting waste, it's cutting cost by investing in reusable, we're actually seeing that the payback is usually less than 12 months, and critically for patient safety, we're also actually seeing that. These, these gowns, have, we're, we're not seeing any increase at all in terms of surgical site infections.
If anything, we're seeing improved performance, and the feedback from clinic teams, is really, really positive. They love them. They're really, really nice to wear.
So, so, so working across all of the impact areas. I was just gonna go into one final room and then I am gonna hand over to David. So the only other area we're gonna talk about is the prep room, and lots of little areas where you can make a, make a difference.
So if we go up to the top here. There's a really, most rooms within the practise, so it's not just the room, but most rooms within the practise will probably have air con units. And actually after extreme heat in the summer, I suspect that that those that didn't have air con units will be actually bringing them in.
But what we can do if, one of the areas we need to be doing is be looking at moving away from using gas, you can actually use your air conditioning to actually be heating, some rooms, and particularly if you're on a renewable energy, energy tariff, this means that you're getting zero carbon heating effectively. So that's one to be, to be thinking about, not just in the prep room, but actually in, in many areas of the practise. If we look at the taps, again, a really, really simple thing that can be done is actually installing foot operated taps or water sensor taps.
Much, much easier for the, for the practise team, cutting, cutting water usage and waste, and, saving money on water bills at the end of the day. And then I think the last one just to look at is gloves. This is one that we know that for many, for many practise teams, it ends up being almost a a reflex action to actually reach for examination gloves.
But actually, it's really, really important to think about only using them when it's clinically appropriate. Sometimes using hand sanitizer gel is actually going to be much better, in terms of, in terms of the examination. In terms of the the way that the patient, the patient reacts, and better in terms of hygiene.
So, so thinking, thinking about that, as, as another big impact area. And the final Area was really just to show that at the end of the, this is really just to to give you a bit of a sense of a taster of some of the areas that you can that you can choose, and then if we go to the end of the the the final page of the tool is really just to say that there is so much more out there. So .
The first place that we're sort of suggesting that you go is the Vet Sustain website which has so much in terms of resources and guidance that will allow you to go deeper. So once you've, you've started to to pick some of these initiatives, worked out what it is that you'd like to, you'd like to start on, you can then continue to, to, to research. We've also got links to the .
Our positive paw print report which actually shows you a lot of the areas that we're working on at IBC again, giving you some inspiration, of the areas that you can look at and then looking at what MSD are doing as well. That's all that I was gonna say, and they now hand over to David. Thank you, Sarah, very much.
I'll, I'll now try and be as eloquent as that, and, and I, and I won't achieve that. Can I just apologise in case you are picking up some background noise, I've stepped out of a conference, on disease surveillance to, to be here, and there's a little bit of background noise, so I apologise for that. So I'm just gonna give you some examples from large animal practise and a suggestion how to gamify the tool, to make it a little bit, sort of, .
Engaging perhaps for some, for some people. Well, I'd be remiss of me not to remind everybody about the six W's of veterinary sustainability, which were rather cleverly come up with by Ed Bailey, our current chair, but, just to remind you of those 6 W's of wildlife, welfare, warming, well-being, waste. And wildlife.
So, just have a, a little bit of a, and I, I would like to say as well at this stage that the original idea for the installation at the London Bet show was, was was Laura Gelder Robertson, who'd seen this used in other industries or at least one other industry and brought, brought us the, the installation idea, which we were really chuffed to work with IVC Evidencia and MSD to, to bring to, to fruition. As well, as you know, Vet Sustains a not for profit, so it was wonderful to partner with this and, This is all part of our veterinary sustainability roundtable concept as well, that getting everybody together to, to look at these things. So that's that was then how it worked really well at London Vet show, as Sarah said, and we then, well IBC came up with the idea then of developing this into this digital tool, which is absolutely fantastic.
So, if we just have a look at an example here from the farm side. And what we'll notice as well is that the dots are not numbered on the actual tool, but when you actually click on the dots, there is a number, and that's relevant for us when we come to the, the gamification. So here we are, we're outside the practise in the car park and possibly more relevant for some, some of the ambulatory vets.
But one of the things we might consider, would be to drive electric, and of course that's not just for farm animal, that's equine small animal as well. And we've got impacts there on warming, and there's a financial benefit too. If we then go into the pharmacy and laundry area, just to pick one of the sections here, this would be one again that would be very dear to my heart around prescribing responsibly.
We've just launched the UK ruminant antibiotic stewardship roadmap at BCBA 2 or 3 days ago, so this is an area that I'm very passionate about, particularly not just on antibiotics, but on all medicines. So this would be an area that you could talk about over in the pharmacy in the laundry about prescribing responsibly. We go back outside the practise again, choose another one, might be to generate your own energy.
Mixed or rural practises may have more opportunity, for us some outside space, maybe have got some space for solar panels, or maybe for some welfare space for staff, well-being gardens, bee gardens, some flowers round about, the premises, whatever, it doesn't need much. Green space round about a practise premises to, to do a little bit of contribution to, to green space. And then this is the, the new slide that's been created, which we didn't have it on the, on the large installation at London Veg show, but this is to go outside into the, into the sort of a farm and equine space if you like, into the work, workspace space, so we've got some, some farm, farm examples here and some equine, and just to choose one, would be advocacy, would be something else that I'm very, very passionate about.
I think as trusted advisors and members of our communities. We've got a huge opportunity to advocate for, best practise and to educate owners on sustainable animal husbandry and welfare choices. For those sharp-eyed amongst you, although we call this the 50 dots tool, it's sort of colloquially become known as the 50 dots tool, we have actually got one or two more than than 50.
But that's, that's not so important. There's one or two extra things that we wanted to include. So, how do we go about engaging people, I've run this at Paragon, I've also run it through some Excel vet workshops just to sort of try it out and test it.
And we all know that vets tend to, we're all short for time, right, so that's a, that's a challenge, but also people like to be a little bit competitive, so I've, we've, we've sort of made a suggestion about how to use the tool here, and what I'm suggesting is that for the purposes of this exercise, you're Paragon's Green group for the day, you've got to choose 6 interventions that you want to implement in the practise. The aim is to choose those, that are going to make most impact. But as in real life, practise time is always limited, so what I've been doing is setting this up to be a 20 minute exercise and 25 clicks, round the tool.
That's to stop people sort of scrolling as quick as they can round the tools, clicking on as many dots as they can, and then just trying to choose the, the, the most important ones from that, so the idea is that, The Green Group works together to decide which room to go into, which dots to click on, and of course, because, as Sarah's just showed us, we don't exactly know what's behind each dot, there's a bit of fun, just deciding which dot to go to, what might be behind it, and it creates a bit of discussion. So we basically, as I said, we walk around this virtual veterinary practise together, we choose the six interventions that we would like to employ as the, as the Green Group team. So we choose which areas of the practise to visit, we choose which icons to click on, and then part of this exercise is to get the Green Group working together, to discuss where they want to go and discuss which dots they might like to click on, and then to choose the interventions.
At the end of that, as you, as I said to you, we each dot has a number. So once the green group has chosen which dots, which six dots they want to choose, we record those choices, and the scores from each of those groups are totaled, and there's a prize for the group who have had the most impact at Paragon. So how do we measure that?
Well, we developed a framework, a scoring framework. I've used a little bit of help from an AI friend to develop this. But these are based on our practise, we're a mixed species rural practise in Cumbria, approximately 30 full-time equivalent vets, about 65 full-time equivalent staff in total.
And, I scored each of the criteria, a little bit subjectively, some of, excuse me, some of them perhaps, but I weighted them so that the environmental impact is worth 40%, staff engagement 20%, how, how likely are staff gonna go, go along with that idea? Financial savings, 15%, the cost of implementation 15%, and the ease of implementation, 10%. So that was the sort of weightings that I used to to, to develop the, the framework.
I would be happy to share those with people, but they are pretty much for our practise, and I would encourage you to maybe give it a little bit of thought yourself as to what they might be for your business or your practise. And these images are, are, our green group in one of our well-being spaces, discussing some of the interventions. And the bottom photograph is, some of our team planting some, fruit trees.
I didn't know this until I started all about sustainability, but you need 6 trees to be, an orchard. I never knew that. 5 trees is not an orchard, 6 trees is, so this is us making up our fruit trees into an orchard.
So, as Sarah's already described to you, here's the tool, and let's take an example of when we actually go out into the car park, for this example, and the one I'm showing you here is you click on the dot, we get the 0.51 is to do a travel audit. Just another example, that we had before, and how, how does this travel audit work to, to, help people, look at what transport is being used, what sort of grants and loans might be available, and what they can do to be greener with that.
So rather than give, give the, give the answers away just to give you a flavour, this, these were the top 6 ranked interventions that we found at Paragon when we did this. So 0. 35, excuse me if you're picking up some background noise now.
0.35 was to sort it out, it was around waste management. Poweering up.1, power up for good, renewable resourcing, as Sarah's already said, thinking about anaesthetics, how low can we go, responsible prescribing, clever route planning, and then capturing anaesthetic emissions.
So those were the top six, as it turned out, when we did this exercise at Paragon. And then the question I often get asked is, is around, is there a business case? And if we look at it as a business case, these are our figures at Paragorm between 2022 and 202020204, and we're looking at the business total, additional or additional cost or savings.
And if we look, if we look at that as we look down the business total, as a total itself, you'll see that some of those areas actually did cost us more money, so we spent more on gas, more on wood chip for a biomass boiler, and more on waste. And more on transport, but then when we've converted that back to full-time equivalents, you could see that actually on every, because the practise was growing, we had more people in the practise, we were doing more work. If you then calculated that back to full-time equivalents and worked it out, then every single one of those criteria, was, was beneficial.
It's not a lot of money, but it was about 233 pounds per full-time equivalent over the period of the two years. So although it's, as I say, it's not a lot of money, it does give us reassurance that doing all these good things is actually of benefit across the business as well. And that's me, thank you very much indeed.
Thanks so much David and Sarah for two really cracking presentations, so I'm just gonna see if we get some questions coming up, so please put those in the question box if you have any questions. And then I can er relay those to the. Speakers to Sarah and David.
I think though Sarah, you made a really good point. I, I've got the t-shirt on, the Reading lines, we've had the two warmest summers on record, I know you, you made the point at the beginning, so. Even if practises are only doing something, it's better than doing something than nothing, isn't it, and it's a great tool to show where they can have those impacts and obviously David you've showed it.
To work really well in your practise, so . Yeah, hopefully it's gonna be a tool that a lot of people will enjoy and and use. And I think the idea, the idea is very much to, to give that full menu, because there will be some things that that may be impactful but feel quite difficult to do.
But actually it's showing that actually you can, there's usually something you can find which actually won't be that difficult a change to make. So we, we want people to just feel that they can make a start somewhere. Perhaps from both of you, if, if someone only has 15 to 20 minutes, I think you've actually demonstrated the two really well, you know, practically, as well in your practise, David, but.
Is is this something maybe for the business owner to look at first and then to to look or it it seemed as if it worked really well as a a team exercise with you as well. Perhaps David first. Yeah, I think it's, it's just that idea of making it a bit more fun.
I think it's, it's just different ways of people learning, isn't it, Anthony, and some people quite like to read a, read a paper or, or, or watch a webinar. I just find that quite often with bets, especially make it a little bit competitive and say look, you know, there's gonna be a prize, it'll be a tin of chocolates, whatever it is, it doesn't need to be much, does it? But we can actually stimulate it.
And as I said, I did it at an Excel bets sustainability day. Down at your favourite wildlife park not far from you. Yeah, and it, and it worked really well and it really got some good discussion going and actually part of the discussion, part of the valuable discussion was people deciding which dot to go for, and so I said, oh that's the anaesthetic trolley, I wonder if, I wonder if there's something on there we could click that's gonna make a difference and actually part of the learning was, was that bit of it rather than the actual scores at the end of about having that chat, and actually when you start looking at it.
Across the different species and across the different parts of the practise, there are so many things to do, and as Sarah says, and there's some really quick wins, changing to a green energy provider takes very little time, very little staff, you know, somebody, somebody in your accounts team does that, and it's a massive impact, so that one scores quite highly, just straight off the bat. Mm Any, any other points on that, Sarah? No, I mean, I, I think there are, I mean, it's, it's really, it's great to see how David's used it in, in his practise as a real lived example, but I, I think, you know, it will vary, you know, I mean, there's, there's no reason to not to just put it up on a screen in a, you know, in a team meeting and even spend the, you know, 5 minutes looking at one room, because I mean the fact that you can just dip in and out of it.
You don't need to dedicate, if you haven't got 15 minutes, dedicate 5 minutes to it and just look in one room and actually maybe also go through and actually say, OK, so we're doing those 3 things. Actually, let's have a pat on the back. We're doing, we're doing OK.
And then here's maybe one more that we can, that we can aim to do. So there's, there's no, there's no need to like take everything on at at once, but it's actually just, just picking a few, and yeah, and I think it's, it's always good for, for some of us to actually feel validation that actually we are doing some stuff already because certainly most of the practises . That that we work within our network, they're actually doing a lot and so they sometimes say we've got so much more to do and it's actually no, no, no, you should be pleased, you know, be proud of what you are doing and then, and then use that to motivate you to carry on.
So, so but I think, you know, can be, can be 5 minutes, can be, can be 15 minutes, can be. With the whole team can be with the green group can be with the the practise owner, I suppose, but, but actually you want the team to be involved as well because the team will have the team will have ideas and, and actually what you need to do is to get people, people who want to own different initiatives, and that's really important to actually get them. I think you made a really valid point because obviously the three of us are really interested in this area, so we kind of take it for read that people understand about the greenhouse warming potential of anaesthetics, but of course not everybody does know, so it's really good that you've got a tool that kind of gives you those, those easy facts, because we did a survey with Kinetic and 89% of vets across 4 countries are interested and concerned about sustainability, so it's obviously an area.
That vets, this was only a veterinary one, it didn't include nurses, but I'm sure nurses are the same, it is an area that, vets and nurses are very committed to, albeit sometimes that journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step. It's difficult sometimes to make that first step, but once you've started, you then begin to see other things that you can do as well, don't you? Exactly, so it's just, it's just making that, making that start.
But I, I think one of the other things to, to, to sort of say in terms of where we've, I emphasis emphasise the benefits as you say, not sometimes people need to be engaged and then some people. Are very enthusiastic and knowledgeable. Others perhaps don't have that basis.
But actually by showing the different aspects of the different benefits of actually showing the benefits for, for, for patients and the benefit in terms of financial benefit, it actually should mean that. You should be, you should be able to find a way of actually getting anybody in the practise on board, because actually, even if it's, even if it's the practise owner who's actually, you know, stressed about the bottom line, if you can actually say that anaesthesia is, is gonna, you know, if we go for low flow, we're going to reduce our emissions, we're going to improve, improve patient care, but actually we're gonna save a lot of money at the same time. That makes it very hard to say no.
And I think also the isoflurane or in fact any anaesthetic, I remember, Going back a long time when I was in er just starting practise or as a student, and we know that anaesthetic gases, there's a health and safety risk as well, you know that if if people are absorbing those anaesthetics every day there can be more risk of disease of loss of pregnancy and so on, so there's a, there's a health and safety reason which, Is a good enough reason if you know you can keep hold of staff more because you're looking after people better then they're going to stick around aren't they? Exactly, I think it with always it it it it's showing the wider, the wider sustainability benefit. Across, yeah.
I've got a couple of other questions. How do you see the tool, because we've talked about it as a kind of starting point, you know, that 1520 minutes, 5 minutes, however long you can spend, but how could the tool support more long-term improvement rather than just being a one-off and then, as some of the, some apps are, you know, you, you go on them once and then you never go on them again. Do you want to take that one first, Sarah?
Happy to, I mean, I think David can probably give some lived experience from, from Paragon, but I, I would say that it's, as we've sort of, as I mentioned, you can go into the fantastic resources on the Vet Sustain website to actually, if you want to go deeper, if you want to start looking at what the, you know, what the next steps are beyond beyond the ones that we've highlighted. The other thing obviously setting up a, setting up a green group, setting up, you know, setting up a, a sort of group within the practise that will actually manage these things. And then there are, there are obviously lots of other tools, you know, investors in the environment, for example, is, is one that's, that's popular, in many clinics, IVC clinics have, have access to our positive paw print toolkit where we actually give them the, the next steps forward, but .
But I think it's, it's probably about setting up a, a some kind of team, some kind of structure where you're actually measuring your impact and then you're setting your objectives. In terms of managing those, but David can probably comment more into. Yeah, any other comments there, David?
Yeah, I suppose there's two aspects to it, and I don't, I don't want to land IVC with, with more work in the future, but I know when I've spoken to Kat and Sarah about this, that this tool can be adapted in the future if there if there were additional areas that are additional bits of information that we could put in behind those dots, and that's part of the benefit of it now being a digital tool as opposed to being a static one. And things are going to change. I think it's, I think you make a very valid point, Anthony, because I think it's quite easy sometimes to think, well, we've done that, and we've, you know, we've done, whatever it might be, you know, the, the, the, the, the example I was given about the green energy provider, but that's just one, so I would like to think that people will revisit the tool and have a look at things that are that they can go back and have another think about.
And, and, and one bit of feedback I've had as well, you know, we don't have, we don't have an option to put in a biomass boiler or or a heat source pump or, you know, we don't have those options. So by all means dismiss that, but you might have an area, you know, for example, these new solar panels that you can just get solar panels that plug into a 13 amp socket, so technology's changing, isn't it? So although people may not want to put solar panels on the roof or they're in a rented building or something like that, there may be other options.
I think one of the big things for me is about the green space, and you've, you've experienced this, I know I've heard you talking about this, Anthony, that everybody can find a little bit of, I've actually just come out of that conference centre now and here I am with some potted plants round about me, it's in central London, not a lot of space, but somebody's managed to find. Some areas for green, and, and I think the whole aspect of staff well-being, that's something we spend a lot of time thinking about at Paragon is we have our well-being gardens and we're very lucky to have the space round about our practises. But it doesn't have to be a big space, does it?
It just has to be somewhere that people can get out of the clinical environment to have a lunch or have a chat. So it's all those little things which are difficult to put a financial value on, but they're relatively easy to implement sometimes and, and, and quite impactful. And, and I suppose that the benefit of the tool is, as you say, you can be in one room and you might say well OK, let's really do a deep dive on theatre, but then the next room is waiting area, you know, can you do more education with pet owners about carbon footprints and things, so there seems to be a lot of really nice stories there and if you try and do all 53, 54, whatever the number of dots were.
All in one go, nobody does that because that's kind of impossible, isn't it, whereas if you've got, one or two that you aim at, you're probably gonna do them much better and when you've completed those, you move on to the next one, so I, I feel there's quite a lot of longevity, now I know Mark has got his hand up, and I'm not sure why he's got his hand up, if you've got a question, Mark, we tend to just do it through, putting that in there, so let me see if we've got a few more, if Mark's asked a question there, Nicky is saying thank you for an amazing and insightful presentation, I need to go to another meeting. Will this presentation be shared, of the session, so obviously it's all recorded, so you'll be able to see that as well. We've also got, Matt who's just said a great tool.
So, he's looking, he's really enjoying that, let me see if there's anything. Else here on the er the chat, sometimes people put things in the chat . Let me see another question here, is there a way for users to provide any feedback or suggest improvements, I, I'm presuming a lot has gone on with IVC members, Sarah, how's, how has that helped in that kind of development of the tool?
So yeah, we, we definitely asked for feedback from a number of our practises and then I know that David asked for David and the vet sustain team also went out to a number of practises asking for feedback. So, that, you know, one of the developments, for example, was actually that that that dedicated page around around farm and equine, very aware that we wanted to sort of call out, call out that area. That we've also tried to make it, clearer in the tool, which elements are, are for farm and equine because actually so, so many of the initiatives are actually very much relevant to a farm and equine practise, in the same way that they are to small animals, so we wanted to make sure that it was very inclusive of, of all the, all the different species types, and in terms of sort of ongoing feedback, .
You can either email the vet sustain team or you email my team we're positive paw print at IVC Evidencia.com. I'm really happy to sort of hear what people think of it, any ideas, any thoughts, it is something that is, that is, that is live that I, I'm, I'm certain there's gonna be a version to.
At some point, where we can just sort of add some of the extra, we, we, we might have to rename it 70 dots by that point, but, but, but yeah, but I, I think I'm certain that there will be, there will be another version where we can, we can just continue to, to update, you know, at IVC we are, we are permanent. The trialling, sort of learning, developing new initiatives in terms of in addressing our impacts. So actually, those will be rolled in, we can share those and keen to share those with, with the wider this this webinar will obviously is being recorded, will be shared, and obviously people can come back to it and look again, obviously using the tool, I think.
Obviously there's 50+ points, doing one or two of them well, if every practise did that, that would have a massive impact, and you can obviously see the ones, we've talked a lot about anaesthetics, we've talked a lot about waste, reusable drapes and gowns, there are 3 areas I think if people, if, if 10% of practises worked on those, it'd have a massive impact, wouldn't it, Sarah? Absolutely, yeah. So I, I think, I think this is, you know, this is very much the, the perspective that we come through that if everybody just makes a small change, collectively, collectively, the impact is enormous.
Yeah, and as Sarah said, hello at Bet sustain.org is I think Hannah's just put that email and link in there as well. I think on the farm side, Anthony, it's ambulatory whenever mixed mixed practises.
And and farm equine and ambulatory is such a massive part of it, and that's, that's got to be the big, the big focus for us, whether it be EVs or hybrids or route planning or all sorts of things. I think there's a big discussion to be had. But for me, and certainly for us at Bets are saying if this helps drive the conversation at practise level within the green groups across the management teams, then that's, that's a good outcome for us, rather than necessarily saying you must do this dot, this dot, it's really about.
Opening up those discussions in a, in an in an easy way for people to, to start those dialogues, I think that for us is, is it would be a really is is the is the key outcome really. The kinetic study again was talking about vets often have talks with their family, with colleagues, but aren't doing them as much with pet owners. But of course farm vets have a massive impact and influence as that trusted friend going into the farm, talking about hm could you do a little bit of wildflower there, you know, we know that a little bit around the sides doesn't necessarily reduce.
The productivity of the farm and can actually add to that, bringing pollinators in, improving, er the texture of the soil with dung beetles and so on, so, I think farm vets have a, can have a really huge impact, In that kind of advice area, can't they as well, and obviously do. Yeah, yeah, and we're very fortunate, aren't we, that we are trusted, we are trusted and, and, and farmers will, will listen to us, but I think that applies also to the equine side, I think there's an awful lot more that we can do with equine. You actually look at that from a sustainability point of view, and parasitology and, and pasture, pasture use, big, big trucks driving around the country with horses in them.
There's lots that we can do there. I think also as businesses, we tend to be embedded within our local communities, don't we? And people look to us as as as part of the community as a local business.
So I think there's there's not only the advocacy piece that I bang on so much about, there's also leading by example, and if our businesses A leading by example and and as as Sarah said, if there's some, I I love the blister pack idea in the in the in the waiting rooms for example, but if people can see that we're making an effort and we're at least talking about it, then that, that helps potentially stimulate other businesses in our small communities to engage as well. And to see us as vets, as being an exemplar for others to follow because if we're not bothered about this, we have to ask the question, who's gonna do it. Yeah, exactly.
I think, I don't think there's any more questions, people have obviously enjoyed the presentation. Thank you so much for the hard work you all, you both put into this and developing the model at Vet Sustain and IVC Evidencia and looking forward to how it progresses and develops and gets used by vets and nurses out in practise. And can I just say thank you very much Anthony to you and your team as well at Webinar Bet for for helping us with with this, and you know you've you've you've put this on and helped us with this and get the message out and for all you're doing for sustainability as well, so thank you to you and your team.
Oh no problem, it's a pleasure, it's a, it's such an important area to be, supporting and being involved with, so thank you again and thanks Sarah. Thanks everyone for listening, it will be recorded, there'll be a nice little certificate for people as well, do go and have a bit more time on the apps, show the people who perhaps haven't been on the presentation from your practise as well and be lovely to hear some, some, some stories back how the the app is being used as well, so. Yeah, looking forward to hearing how that goes, have a great rest of the day, enjoy lunch if you can get it and er we'll er we'll hopefully see you on a podcast or a webinar very soon.
Take care, bye bye. Thank you. Thanks both.
