Sustainability

Here are Hart vets we are aware that the way we practice veterinary medicine can impact how big our environmental footprint is as a practice. While there are a lot of areas we’re excited to improve further in the future, here are some of the things we’re already doing as a team to improve the sustainability of how we work:

Sustainability in the practice building

• Both practices have LED lighting, and Waddesdon is fitted with motion sensor lights in the hospital areas, so lights don’t accidentally get left on.
• Both buildings are double glazed throughout.
• Waddesdon has timers set on it’s cooling and heating so that these are not running when the building is unoccupied. Bicester does not have this as we always have staff and patients on site so there isn’t a time when the building is out of use. At Bicester lights are switched off when individual rooms are out of use.
• We have recycling at both sites for tins, cardboard, plastic and paper. Of course all sensitive paperwork is shredded prior to recycling.

Sustainable operating theatres

Not many people know that the gases we have to use to keep pets and people asleep during an anaesthetic can potentially harm the environment as they damage the ozone layer. So we do several things here to reduce that impact:

• We use injectable drugs for your pet prior to the start of the general anaesthetic, to make your pet sleepy. This reduces both their stress levels, and means we usually will need to use lower levels of inhaled drugs to keep them at a safe level of anaesthesia for their procedure. We also use local anaesthetic blocks when appropriate to provide additional pain relief, which also reduces the amount of inhaled drugs needed to keep the patient asleep
• We no longer use Nitrous oxide in our practices, as this has been shown to cause higher levels of damage than more modern inhalational gases.
• We use anaesthetic equipment and anaesthesia techniques that allow safe reductions in the amount of volatile gases by recycling gas within the breathing system.
• Our nurses use pulse oximetry, capnography, electrocardiography and blood pressure monitoring routinely as part of our anaesthetics- this close monitoring makes our anaesthetics safer for your pet, and also allows us to more closely manage the amount of drug they need to keep them asleep, reducing unnecessary drug usage
• Much of our Oxygen usage is delivered as gas cylinders by lorry, but we also have portable oxygen generators at both sites, and can use these to harvest oxygen from the air at the patient side. This is especially useful for patients needing long periods of oxygen support e.g. that are struggling to breathe and are inside our oxygen kennel, as previously these patients would use a lot of cylinder oxygen over their hospitalisation.
• We use fabric scrub hats rather than disposable ones, and wrap our kits in fabric drapes.

Vehicle emissions

• To reduce emissions from clients visiting the practice we try whenever possible to book your appointment at the nearest clinic to you, and if you have multiple pets, to bring ensure that their appointments are on the same visit. This isn’t always possible, but works for the majority of our appointments. 
• We have also been working with our main supplier MWI since 2021 to reduce our deliveries, from every weekday to twice a week. This increased efficiency over their UK veterinary network has meant they have been able to cut out 1 million miles of driving from their deliveries, saving 319 tonnes of carbon!

Reducing the environmental impact of your medications

We have been thinking of ways to reduce the impact of pet medications, and there are a few things you may or may not be aware of that we have in place:

• Online datasheets- when you are prescribed drugs, you used to get a paper printed sheet that came with the medication, telling you about it and side effects etc. Nowadays you will usually find you have a link on the label that will direct you to a digital version of this information, saving a lot of paper- especially for those pets on repeat prescriptions where many people generally wouldn't re-read the datasheet every time they collect their pet's medications. 
• Medication returns- if you have out of date or otherwise unused medications, please be aware you can and should return these to us for safe disposal (there is no charge for this service). We will then put the medication in the appropriate clinical waste, so that the drugs do not pollute soil or watercourses via domestic waste collection/waste water
• Tablet packaging- these can’t be recycled in conventional waste streams as they are mixed materials. We now have a blister pack recycling collection point at our Bicester surgery. You can give any empty medication packaging to the reception team and they will take them and put them in our collection box- we don’t keep it in reception due to foot traffic and the risk of being wee’d on!

Preventative care

When humans or animals are ill, the resources used in diagnosing and treating those illnesses has an environmental impact. We can reduce the ‘medical’ footprint of our pets by keeping them as healthy as possible, with good diets and preventative healthcare such as parasite treatment and vaccinations. The annual check up at your vaccinations is also a great opportunity for us to spot any changes early, as diseases caught early generally have better outcomes for your pet and require less resources to diagnose and treat them. We have more information about preventative medicine under the ‘Pet Advice’ tab on our website.