As part of our sustainability plan for 2023 we wanted to understand our carbon emissions better. Thankfully Vet Sustain produced a veterinary specific carbon calculator, which made the job of doing a carbon audit straightforward, and gives us some figures to work with.
Our 2022 footprint was 16.47 Tonnes CO2e. Surprisingly for us, over 6 tonnes of this is down to anaesthetic gas usage!
While not a perfect solution we have made the decision to ‘offset’ our emissions and have chosen to support a project in the Amazon rainforest this year. Many thanks to Eco Offset Ltd for their guidance on this.
In terms of reducing our emissions we have already got the following in place:
- Upgraded to a more efficient boiler and efficient lighting
- Using a ‘green tariff’ for our electricity supply.
- Using low-flow anaesthesia techniques.
We will look at what else we can do with the buildings as a whole in terms of insulation, and continue to encourage energy saving within the team. We are also completing a waste audit to identify if we can improve our recycling further.