We want to hear from you!
Welcome to BEVA’s first “Sustainability Tips for Equine Vets”. We all know that our planet is facing catastrophic threats, including global warming, pollution, and deforestation.
A recent survey of equine veterinary teams has shown that most of us working in veterinary practices care passionately about these issues, but often don’t know what we, as individuals or veterinary teams, can practically do to address them. The enormity and complexity of the problems can feel overwhelming, but we should always remember that even small changes to the ways that we live and work can have a positive impact. That’s why BEVA have launched “Sustainability Tips for Equine Vets”. In our fortnightly eNews, we will provide information and tips about two sustainability topics; one of the tips will focus on our personal and home lives, and one will relate to equine veterinary practice.
There are several other groups and organisations within the veterinary sector that are running sustainability projects, and we have no intention of trying to reproduce their work or “re-invent the wheel”; rather we will be working with them and highlighting their work by providing links to sources of information already available.
BEVA has set up a Sustainability Working Group, who will be co-ordinating our efforts in this area. We are keen to hear from any BEVA member who has comments, ideas, or their own tips for promoting sustainability. Please e mail us on info@beva.org.uk or comment on our Facebook (@beva.org.uk) / Twitter pages (@BEVA_news ).
We are very excited to announce that Jen Gale has agreed to help us with our “Sustainability Tips for Equine Vets” project. Jen is a veterinary surgeon, best-selling author of "The Sustainable(ish) Living Guide and The Sustainable(ish) Guide to Green Parenting" and founder of Sustainable(ish), a community interest company.
Jen Gale’s First Tip for Everyone
I think my first tip for everyone would be to recognise the huge amount of power we have to create change, even as ‘just one person’. The power of our consumer choices can drive change from retailers and manufacturers. The power of our ‘citizen voice’ can be used to call for change from our elected representatives, whether that’s national or local government. We also hold power as ‘influencers’. We might not think it, but we are all influencers and by sharing and talking about some of the changes that we’re making, we’re planting seeds and giving others permission to care and to make their own changes. Lastly, and this one sounds like we might need some kind of secret handshake, we all have the capacity to be ‘change agents’ in the organisations we work or are involved in - you can be the person asking the questions and making the suggestions to make your practice more sustainable.
Our First Tip for Equine Practices
Vet Sustain is a veterinary organisation whose mission is to enable and inspire veterinary professionals to continually improve the health and wellbeing of animals, people and the environment. The Greener Veterinary Practice Checklist is a graphic designed to help veterinary workplaces operate in a more environmentally friendly way. The graphic includes four major areas for action that cover practising responsible resource use, being sustainable in your operation, using medicines responsibly, and sustaining the team. Each theme has a list of ways that these actions can be achieved. We will be looking in greater detail at many of these areas in future Sustainability Tips for Equine Vets.