It was such a pleasure to connect with wonderful vet and Clinical Director, Nikki. Nikki is navigating the path to becoming green in general practice, and here she reflects on what inspired her to start making changes at work, getting her team on board, and what they’ve achieved so far. It’s so inspiring to hear how positive the reaction from the team has been, and brilliant to see they are sharing their sustainability efforts with their clients on their website.
I have been lucky enough to see some amazing parts of this world on past travels and feel a strong sense of responsibility to take care of these beautiful places.
Nicole Dyer
“My name is Nikki and I am a vet and one of the Clinical Directors of Ash Tree Vets, a small animal practice in Leicestershire. I have always loved the outdoors and the natural world, particularly the ocean; I have been lucky enough to see some amazing parts of this world on past travels and feel a strong sense of responsibility to take care of these beautiful places. Over the last few years I have worked on reducing my personal impact and am really passionate about this, but for some reason had always overlooked my impacts at work. I sort of just accepted the waste made in general practice as necessary and unavoidable until early last year when I started to wonder if there were better options. I came across a webinar by Ellie West at Davies Veterinary Specialists and found that she had done a lot of work on this and was kindly sharing it so that others could do the same. This was really the first step for me and led to finding heaps of other resources made by like-minded individuals. It was really inspiring to read about other people’s efforts and it made me feel really positive that I could actually make change.
It seemed I was not alone as I had a number of volunteers at work to help me with this project and we got together one evening at the end of last summer (online given social distancing restrictions!) to share ideas. I used Ellie’s webinar as a framework of things to discuss initially to give us a solid starting point.
The things we have done are fairly simple but I think have made a large impact. So far we have increased the number of recycling bins so that there is one in every clinical area. This has made it so much easier for everyone during a busy day to use the correct bins. We have made some product swaps that use less plastic or are recyclable compared to the previous products such as syringes, buster collars and medicinal waste bins. We are also trying to use re-useable products where possible like scrub hats (I have a particularly fetching Surfing Dogs scrub hat from All Scrubbed Up!). My personal favourite addition is our compost bin for our food waste; I obviously work with a very healthy bunch as we put a decent haul of fruit peels and cores in this each week!
We have got some bigger projects in mind for the future that will require a bit more discussion from a cost point of view such as investing in LED lighting, increasing energy efficiency of our premises as well as some clinical topics I would like to get stuck into. These things seem to take a little more time, with this in mind and the fact everyone is still very busy with their day to day duties we have tried to keep up the momentum of our ‘Green Team’ by also focusing on fun things to do with everyone at work. We have shared recipes with each other and added an oat milk option to the fridge for Veganuary. In the spring we would like to have an overhaul of the practice garden to add bug hotels, bird feeders and pollinator friendly flowers. We also have plans to get everyone involved in some plastic free challenges for ‘Plastic Free July’.
As I started this I was a little apprehensive of my colleague’s responses. Some of our changes did mean adding a little extra time to people’s days, for example washing out dog food tins to be recycled and emptying extra bins at the end of the day. The reaction from the team however has been so positive and has sparked even more ideas and suggestions from everyone. I think this highlights that we are all conscious of our impact and sometimes just need someone to lead a change to get it started. My biggest advice to anyone in the same boat would be to just go for it! Start small and build from there and I think you will be surprised how much you can get done. I am trying to document some of the topics I have looked into as a part of this journey in a blog and Instagram account @gloved_gowned_green, to add to the many other great resources out there to hopefully guide and inspire others on what can potentially be achieved.”
Nicole Dyer
If you’d like to share your sustainability story then get in touch – I’d love to hear from you.
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