Crossriggs Veterinary Clinic – Environmental Sustainability Policy 2025

 

Crossriggs Veterinary Clinic is a general small animal practice. Providing family pets with care ranging from yearly vaccinations, routine neutering, emergency surgery, in-house and external laboratory tests and treating illness. We aim to provide first class care to both our patients and owners whilst always continuing to develop our professional skills and knowledge alongside the constant advancements being made in veterinary medicine.

 

Environmental Commitment

We are proud members of the Galloway and Southern Ayrshire Biosphere. We support Vet Sustain’s veterinary sustainability goals. We acknowledge that our veterinary activities, services and operations have an impact on the environment and have identified key impacts related to our business that contribute to our environmental and carbon footprint. Through the implementation of this sustainability policy we will encourage wide reaching participation, working to reduce these impacts, whilst upholding the highest standards of animal health, welfare and clinical care for our

patients.

 

Key Impacts

We have identified the following key business activities which contribute to our overall environmental and carbon footprint:

  • Gas heating
  • Use of electricity
  • Waste generation and disposal
  • Use of anaesthetic gas
  • Use of water
  • Carbon emissions from transport of personnel and animals
  • Consumption of raw materials (including prescribed drugs, medical plastics, needles)
  • Use of parasiticides
  • Use of antimicrobials
  • Procurement of goods and services

 

Actions

By utilising the following principles of the Vet Sustain Greener Veterinary Practice Checklist, we pledge to contribute to a healthy environment for our employees and patients through the following actions:

  • Practise responsible resource use
    • Change to biodegradable single use gloves
    • Implement reduce, reuse, recycle – encourage staff to use re-usable lunch containers, ensure all single use plastic lunch materials are washed and recycled if not reusable
    • Increase number of recycling bins in practice
  • Continue to develop our green team and have regular meeting to review our progress in our sustainability plan
    • Sustainability champion – Bronwyn McSeveney
    • Members of green team – Ceara McEwan, Sarah Higgins
  • Use medicines responsibly
    • Ensure good stock rotation to minimise wastage
    • Encourage appropriate drug disposal among staff and clients
    • Using a individual patient/client risk assessment when prescribing antimicrobial for the year – ie immunocompromised individuals, outdoors vs indoor cats
  • Be sustainable in our operation
    • Only use mask induction of anaesthesia if absolutely necessary
    • Limit use of masks to deliver anaesthetic gas – when cannot be avoided ensure warning signs in place to limit exposure to colleagues
    • Be aware of gas and electricity use – switching off lights and switches when not in use
  • Empower the team
    • Encourage recycling
    • Encourage good health and wellbeing

 

Targets

We Crossriggs Veterinary Clinic pledge to reduce our environmental impact through a journey of continual improvement. We plan to focus on our actions outlined above to reduce our overall carbon footprint over the next 12 months whilst maintaining the highest standard of patient care and animal welfare.

 

Our environmental policy was discussed with our team on 30th January 2025.

 

Our plan can be reviewed at any time by discussing with management or a member of our green team. Any feedback is welcome and encouraged.